


All the wishes made upon a star

by Leapfroggie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bisexual Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy is a Little Shit, Durmstrang Student Draco Malfoy, Gay Draco Malfoy, Hogwarts Fourth Year, M/M, Multi, Oh he's so bi in this guys, Older Draco Malfoy, POC Harry Potter, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Triwizard Tournament, but soft too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27484822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leapfroggie/pseuds/Leapfroggie
Summary: Harry might be forgiven for never realizing his birthmark was actually a soulmark. They're supposed to be uncommon, and his two best friends already sport one each. He's glad not to be the one with the weird stuff to handle for once, too.So of course his birthmark starts acquiring a shape right before the Quidditch World Cup, and then there's the sordid affair of the Triwizard Tournament and this Durmstrang git has made it his mission in life to make him blush at every turn.Quite frankly, Harry's not sure he can handle Draco Malfoy for a whole year.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 87
Kudos: 426
Collections: Harry Potter





	1. The top box

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by Remywrites5 [AU post](https://remywrites5.tumblr.com/post/147875078687/okay-but-an-au-were-draco-went-to-durmstrang) and sadfishkid's [illustration](https://sadfishkid.tumblr.com/post/149496927933) of it.  
> I live for this kind of shit.
> 
> Also motivated by my inability to find inspiration for my NaNo project, so I'm just trying to save my word count by at least writing something.

Harry might have been forgiven for thinking the weird-shaped birthmark on his left hip was nothing more than what it appeared to be.

After all, he had been raised muggle, and soulmarks were, if not extremely rare, at least not so common that people spoke about them incessantly. He had not made the link between the vague grey mark and the tales he had heard in the Gryffindor common room. Plus, Parvarti and Lavande were particularly fond of romance novels which focused on the theme, and somehow, he hadn’t felt that the plots they described between giggles represented anything to strive or wish for. Hermioned always clicked her tongue when the two girls went on about that particular subject. It was no secret that she considered the misrepresentation of soulmarks in literature a personal, and grievous, offense.

“They fill people’s, mostly girls, heads with that silly idea that your mark is only about the person who you’re supposed to love romantically for the rest of your life,” she would always lament. “When really, every research done on the subject shows that they’re linked to reciprocal impact of the greatest magnitude on each of the partner’s lives. Lots of soulmates bonds have never been romantic at all.”

“But lots have been,” Ron would always point out.

They heartily disagreed on the subject. They both had soulmarks, though they both refused to discuss their shape or location. Hermione was adamant that no one was to know about hers, and only Ron and Harry knew she had one, at all. She didn’t want to be associated with the romantic perspective a lot of the students at Hogwarts had of the soulmarks, didn’t want to be limited by it. Ron, on the other hand, could not have made a secret of it if he had wished to: he came from a wizarding family, and a big one at that. A soulmark was something to be proud of, the promise of some great future. He might have been the less remarkable of his siblings in all other aspects, but in this he was singled out as special. Ron saw his mark much more positively than Hermione ever did, because no matter how inadequate he could feel in some instances, he always knew that at some point in time, he would do something that mattered enormously to at least one person. But soulmarks were still incredibly private, to be shared only between the persons who bore them. That was one rule Ron did not care to break, and so no one knew about the shape of his.

Harry personally thought the most obvious explanation was probably the right one, and that his best friends shared the bond, but he had never voiced the opinion. If it was, they would come to the conclusion in their own time, and if they didn’t, better not to take the risk to create awkward situations. For all that Hermione claimed they were not always linked to romantic feelings, it did get tricky on that front anyway.

That was the extent of his knowledge on the matter, and with two people around him bearing the uncommon soulmarks, of his curiosity as well. It wasn’t something that concerned him, thank you very much, and wasn’t that such a relief? That Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived, with his scar and his destiny and his position on the Quidditch team as a first year, didn’t have anything more to separate him from the crowd?

So of course reality had to turn around and smack him in the face, hard. It happened during the summer holidays, when they were all at the Burrow the day before leaving for the Quidditch World Cup. They were in Ron’s room, discussing the upcoming match, all excited and happy, while changing into their pajamas. At some point, Harry turned to Ron to contradict his opinion on Bulgaria’s chances, shaking the shirt in his hand in mock anger, and Ron’s snort of derision suddenly changed into a gasp.

“Harry, you never told us you had a soulmark!” he exclaimed.

“What? No, I don’t have one,” Harry said, confused.

“That’s definitely a soulmark, mate,” Ron said, gesturing at Harry’s hip.

“It’s just a birthmark,” Harry protested, and he moved to drag his trousers up to hide it.

When he did, however, he saw that it didn’t look at all like it used to. It had lost its blurriness, and acquired some sort of definite contour and a more solid color, though it still had no recognizable shape.

“It’s getting more distinct,” Ron said. “Definitely a soulmark.”

“What does it mean?” Harry asked, lost, tracing the mark. “It used to look nothing like this.”

“Yeah,” Ron said. “That’s because you haven’t met the other person yet. It only starts getting a shape a few days before you meet them. Mine did right before we started Hogwarts, so you’ll probably meet them soon. Probably during the World Cup, though.”

Harry couldn’t help but grimace at that.

“Great, that will be ever so practical,” he sighed. “It’s not like there will be thousands of people there.”

“Hey, mine could be anyone at Hogwarts,” Ron shrugged.

Harry refrained from rolling his eyes at this. How neither Hermione nor Ron had ever considered the possibility they might be each other’s soulmarked, Harry could not fathom.

“Plus, it’s no use worrying about it. You’ll definitely meet them and know who they are at some point. That’s sort of the point of it all,” Ron added, gesturing at Harry’s hip.

And with that, Harry’s worries were somewhat alleviated. Hermione’s confirmation on the next day, as they walked to the portkey, assuaged whatever was left of his fears. She did warn him, however, that if their meeting indeed happened during the mess of the World Cup, it might be some years before he was able to meet his soulmarked. After all, it was unlikely to be someone who attended Hogwarts, otherwise Harry would have already declared his mark. Ron noted that it might be a first year, which, ok, fair, but when he joked that it might be the new Defense teacher, Harry bodychecked him into the nearest tree. They were still squabbling when they met with the Diggorys, and Harry couldn’t control his blush when he met Cedric’s amused eyes. When they got to the campsite, he was quick to walk away from the Hufflepuff seeker. Not as bad as falling from his broom because of Dementors but still – bad enough.

By the time they all got to the top box at the stadium, Harry had forgotten all about his soulmark. There was just to much to see and think about, from Mr Weasley’s failed attempts to put the tent up without magic to all manners of decorations – mostly four-leaved clovers, the Bulgarian supporters must have been in another part of the campsite – that Harry just let it slip from his mind. There were too many new people he had met so far, anyway.

The top box was filled with people who looked very important and very much too old to be involved in a bond with him, or so he hoped. There were a few younger people, though, mostly kids of dignitaries. One looked around their age, with very pale hair, like the man who was obviously his father and who just as obviously disliked Mr Weasley. Their greetings were frosty enough Harry almost touched the tip of his nose to check if it had frozen off, and Mr Weasley manoeuvered their party so they sat as far as possible from Fudge’s. The other boy looked at them with some curiosity and a vague air of haughtiness, Harry thought, though it might have been due to his high cheekbones and long nose. It gave the impression he was looking down on them.

“Who’s that?” he asked Ron as they sat down. “Your father doesn’t seem to like him much.”

Ron darted a quick look over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

“Oh, him? That’s Lucius Malfoy. He’s some big shot in the Ministry, and in the Board of Governors, I think. Old pureblood family, a bit too obsessed with it. Everyone knows he was a Death Eater, but he managed to get himself out of trouble by pretending he had been controlled by You-Know-Who,” he whispered. “He even sent his son to Durmstrang, because apparently Hogwarts is not good enough for dear Draco. Not enough Dark Arts, you see. Well rid of him, we are. That git’s probably spoiled beyond belief, and he would have been a Slytherin, no doubt. Look at his mum going about him.”

Harry turned and, sure enough, Mrs Malfoy, if that was her, was fussing with her son’s collar. She was a beautiful woman, with blonde hair several shadescloser to golden than her husband and son’s, and she was talking at him all the while she straightened the otherwise impeccable outfit. The boy – Draco – smiled at her indugently between his answers, as he let her touch him as much as she wanted. To Harry’s eyes, it did not look so much as she was spoiling him rather than him letting himself be spoiled for her own pleasure. He thought it was sweet,just like when Molly tried to feed her brood each enough roast for ten persons at once. Different styles, same sentiment.

 _V_ _ery_ different styles, he amended, considering Mrs Malfoy’s and her son’s very expensive, very elegant robes. The boy caught his eye and gave him a wry smile which seemed to mean “what can you do?” over his mother’s shoulder, and though Harry wasn’t sure he could completely understand the sentiment, he couldn’t help but smile back.

And that was his first impression of Draco Malfoy. Then there was a Wronski feint, a Snitch caught by the losing team, a celebration, an attack and a Dark Mark in the sky. It was all a big mess, and Harry forgot all about Draco Malfoy.


	2. Summer in Wiltshire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco loves the summer holidays. It's the only time he gets to see his parents, because Karkaroff doesn't believe in students having breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had three chapters written from Harry's point of view, when I suddenly decided I also wanted to present Draco's perspective.  
> And I have zero chill, so I had to post it immediately. Behold!
> 
> This is pretty much just to introduce some background about this alternate version of Durmstrang and Draco's personality.

Draco loved returning to the Manor for the holidays each summer.

Karkaroff did not put much faith into school breaks, and despised Chritsmas with an intensity only surpassed by his hatred of muggles. Thus, in Durmstrang, the only times classes were interrupted were during the month of February, for their Practicals, group projects that each year proved to be even more intense and insanely difficult than the previous one, and in the summer, when students were allowed to return home for six weeks. Even then, they were assigned a list of spells to practice and master before school resumed, and Trace or no Trace, you had better have become proficient at them, because the professors sure assumed you were.

All Durmstrang students learned this particular lesson at the start of their second year, generally in a rather nasty manner. Draco had been quite lucky himself, all things considered: Professor Backlund had only transfigured his hair into brambles. It had taken him three weeks to figure out how to reverse it, and sleeping had required a lot of precautions in the meantime.

His roommate hadn’t fared quite so well and had ended up with his eyes sewed shut for months. His countercurse was simple, so long as you weren’t so hated no one was willing to look it up for you. Dąbrowski belonged to that category, and it had taken so much time for him to rope a first year into telling him the solution, he had had to repeat the year. Draco would always remember the moment they had learned this with fondness, both for the look on Dąbrowski’s face and the pleasure he himself had felt in the knowledge that he would be assigned a new roommate.  
  
Draco may or may not have been involved in a months-long campaign to ensure no one would help the git until he had missed a certain amount of classes. But that was nobody's business but his, really.

So Draco, each year, only had six weeks to spend with his parents. The first years had been very hard in that respect: he loved them dearly, and they him, especially his mother. Narcissa Malfoy had sent him letters, chocolates, sweets and presents almost everyday until he started his fourth year, when she had managed to reduce her frequency to twice a week. Draco suspected his father’s intercession in that matter, and was silently grateful. As much as he enjoyed his mother’s packages, passing for a spoiled child did not fly well in Durmstrang.

That had been another hard lesson: his father’s name did not carry much weight in Durmstrang. There, Lucius Malfoy was nothing more than a foreign dignitary, one who knew Karkaroff well, to be sure, but with no particular power other than that. Oh yes, he was from the Sacred Twenty-Eight of Britain, but that did not mean much. After all, half the students carried their own pedigree: for example, Draco’s roommate starting from his third year, and his older sister a year above them, were Rasputins. Their grandfather had been a prominent figure of Imperial Russia, as well known across the world as Merlin himself, though perhaps not in quite as positive a light.

Even when the muggle Czar and his family had fallen, the Rasputins had escaped mostly untouched by the revolution. Antoniy and Svetlana’s family fortune outshone the Malfoys’ by an order of magnitude. If their description of their home could be trusted, they lived in a palace which would have dwarfed the Manor, deep into the Ural mountains. And the siblings were not even that exceptional in the social scenery of Durmstrang. That might have been due to the fact that the school had seen quite a number of Rasputins over the years - the siblings' grandfather had apparently been quite prolific, and not all that attached to the concept of monogamy, but what use was it to try and compete with a family whose domain was the size of a small country?

So Draco had quickly understood it was better to keep his mouth shut about his family. It was accepted, even encouraged, to brag about your own accomplishments in Durmstrang, but using your family name was considered to be in bad taste. People from similarly great backgrounds already knew about it, and did not care, and those from less fortunate circumstances either didn’t know the difference, or envied you.

Plus, Karkaroff really cared a lot about appearances and reputations, and he was so universally hated by the student body that no one wanted to emulate him. In an ironic twist of fate, Durmstrang was a breeding ground of progressist ideas, where students learnt about the Dark Arts during the day and exchanged muggle novels and political books in secret during the evening clubs. Each time Karkaroff went on another tirade about how every muggle and muggleborn was a blight upon the surface of the earth, a few students took it upon themselves to find out how his ideas could be disproven.

The more Karkaroff tried to convince his charges that blood purity and the Dark Arts were the last bastion against the savagery of the muggle world, the more they became convinced that the muggle world was absolutely fascinating.

This quiet revolt was led, obviously, by the half-blood students at Durmstrang, but few purebloods resisted the pressure of their peers to convert to a new outlook on life much further than their fourth year. Even Draco had succumbed to it over time: both Antoniy and Svetlana had inherited the charisma of their illustrious grandfather, and they made very compelling arguments. The Rasputin clan had always been very enthusiastic about mingling with muggles, though only their grandfather had deemed it fit to even meddle in their political affairs. They did not put much stock in the Statute of Secrecy, and in their domain, the muggle staff had perfect knowledge of their wizarding colleagues’ and masters’ abilities.

The only problems with that arose during the summer holidays. Draco had not become a muggle lover by any stretch of the imagination, but he had never been much of a people lover in the first place, pureblood or otherwise.

His parents, however, firmly believed in the doctrine of pureblood superiority, passed down through generations in the House of Black, and quite enthusiastically, though nowhere near as fanatically, down the Malfoy line. Of course wizards were superior to muggles, they had magic, and of course purebloods were superior to half-bloods, they had had magic for generations longer, and both parents transmitted it. Muggleborns were flukes, random occurrences that were best left ignored and, frankly, never taught magic at all. They were bound to cause problems in the long run, their blood not strong enough to ensure their descendants would inherit magic with each passing generation. Weakening the bloodlines.

Draco could have pointed out that squibs also appeared in pureblood families. None in the House of Black, of course, his mother would say, but that was because they used to kill them in childhood, and Lucius surely knew of no squibs in the Malfoy line, which Draco found suspicious.

He could also have told them about how muggle technology sometimes rivaled magic. Not everything, of course, but some. They could message one another instantly with phones instead of relying on owls, and he was sure his mother would have enjoyed that immensely, if it had not been muggle, and if phones worked in Durmstrang. They didn’t, Kaija Krysi had tried, but what an invention. And their flying apparatus looked much more comfortable for long distance travel than any broom. It was no international portkey, to be sure, but there was only so much you could take with you with a portkey.

But Draco loved his parents dearly, and had no wish to fight them for the sake of people he did not even know. So he remained silent, and always managed to switch the conversation to another track when the subject came up. Of course his mother noticed it almost immediately: she had been the one to train him in the art of manipulating the conversation to his advantage. She was too well bred, however, to comment on it, and may have sensed his opinion did not align with hers anymore on the matter. Lucius thought nothing of it, probably because he was too used to being the centre of attention to bother attending to the whims of its periphery.

So they remained on good terms, because Draco did not feel like tickling the sleeping dragon for such a little thing. It was of no import, anyway. His parents had their opinions, and he had his, and there was no use in measuring all the ways in which they differed. It would only invite dissent between them, and it was not like Draco ever intended on shacking up with a muggle, anyways. He might find them interesting, but he couldn’t imagine sharing his life with someone he could not fly with.

“Draco, I have grand news,” his mother said, all prim excitement as they sat down to dinner in mid-August. She leaned over the table to grasp his hand in hers, and gave it a light squeeze. Draco glanced at his father, who sat very straight at the head of the table with the satisfied air of a kneazle.

“What is it?” he asked, squeezing Narcissa’s hand back and avoiding a longing look at his plate. He had been flying over the grounds all afternoon, and felt ravenous.

“We will see each other more this year,” his mother said with a happy smile. “Because you will be at Hogwarts!”

“What?” he said, and took a deep breath before schooling his expression. “Are you transferring me? Mother, you know I enjoy Durmstrang, and all my friends are there.”

“Oh no, nothing like that, darling, don’t worry,” his mother reassured him quickly. “No, it is just that a special event will take place at Hogwarts this year, and a delegation from Durmstrang will attend. Your father has arranged it with Karkaroff that you will be part of it.”

Oh. Well, that was much better. At least he would return to Durmstrang for his seventh year. He wasn’t even sure how his curriculum so far would have integrated with Hogwarts’, anyways. The focus of the two schools were completely different.

“Was it wrong, Draco?” his mother asked anxiously. “Should we not have done that? I was just so happy that we might spend the winter holidays together this year.”

“No, Mother, of course not,” he smiled at her. “It will be like an academic exchange, I am sure I will learn a lot.”

“Dumbledore may be a fool,” his father said, “but there is no denying that many professors at Hogwarts are extremely competent. Maybe Severus will have time to tutor you, with any luck.”

Draco had a particular interest in Potions, and the promise of a man of Severus Snape’s calibre teaching him on the subject was more than enough to perfectly reconcile him with the idea of spending a year away from Durmstrang.

“What is this event anyway?” he asked, releasing his mother’s hand. She looked a bit disappointed at the loss, and Draco felt a pang of remorse, but she then gestured at the house elf to serve the food, and that had been his goal, after all. He dug into his food – coq-au-vin, Mother always had it served when she felt happy – with relish.

“They are reinstating the Triwizard Tournament this year,” Lucius said. Draco almost choked on a potato.

“What?” he managed after gulping some water. “I thought they had disbanded it after some beast almost killed all the headmasters.”

“The Ministry believes it can foster some international cooperation, and has been taking numerous measures to ensure the safety of the audience,” Lucius answered with a severe gaze.

“What about the security of the participants? People have died in this tournament!” Draco said, feeling slightly hysterical. The Triwizard Tournament had not happened in two centuries for a _reason_. “And you want me to participate in this?”

“Of course I do not want you to participate in it,” his father said, his voice dripping with disdain. “We are Malfoys, we do not need such pageantry to assess our worth. You are too young, anyway. One of the conditions for Dumbledore to agree to the scheme was that all participants be of age. Karkaroff was very difficult about letting you be on the delegation even though you are not old enough to be selected. I had to twist his arm a little.”

With his father, and knowing Karkaroff, it could mean anything from a bribe to full-on threats. Well, Draco would certainly shed no tears over his headmaster’s discomfort, that was for sure.

“Will I be going to Hogwarts directly?”

“No. The delegations will only come to Hogwarts at the end of October, and Karkaroff was most insistent you return to Durmstrang as per usual.”

Ah! Antoniy would just die of jealousy when he told him.

Draco didn’t even realize his soulmark had started changing until he was on the ship to Durmstrang. There was no way to know when he had met his future bond partner, which pissed him off beyond reason, and no way to announce it to his parents, which was actually a nice compensation for having missed what would have been, technically speaking, the most magical moment of his life. Not everyone was marked by fate, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I make Durmstrang into a den of eager muggle-enthusiasts and reformists? Why yes I did.  
> The idea of Karkaroff being so disliked he drove his students to the very opposite set of values he wanted to teach them is just amusing me beyond belief.
> 
> Plus, you know, of course teenagers are going to track down anything you forbid them from reading. Especially if they're pissed off at a headmaster who abolished school breaks and plays obvious favorites.


	3. Mad-Eye Moody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry can't say he likes the new Defense teacher much. It might have something to do with the fact that he uses curses supposed to send him directly to Azkaban on fourteen-year olds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Harry.  
> Thank to those who left kudos and commented on previous chapters.
> 
> As for previous chapters, no beta, but I'll take any corrections that are offered.

Their fourth year started with two announcements that Harry felt very ambivalent about. Sure, that Triwizard tournament sounded grand, but did they really have to cancel the Quidditch Cup for this? What were they all supposed to do while the three Champions prepared for their Tasks, just watch them? They could have played against Beauxbatons’ and Durmstrang’s teams, too! Such a waste of a great opportunity.

“Stop whinging, the both of you,” Hermione snapped. It had taken three days, which Harry thought was a remarkable amount of time for her tolerance of Quidditch-related topics to dwindle to the negatives. “There will be dozens of international students, you could try and meet them, maybe even learn another language.”

“I don’t think I fancy making a joke of myself trying to speak French,” Ron groaned, plopping down into one of the sofas of the common room. “And what language do they even speak in Durmstrang? No one even knows where it is.”

“Durmstrang takes students from all over Europe, so they all speak their native language,” Hermione said, already hunched over a book. How that girl managed to always have one about remained a complete mystery to Harry. “There is a translation spell over the school, just like there is one here.”

“There’s a translation spell over Hogwarts?” Harry couldn’t help but ask.

Hermione rolled her eyes at him and only mouthed the words _History of Hogwarts_ at him, like it explained how she knew anything about Durmstrang.

“So how would that work if we tried to speak French with the Beauxbatons students? Wouldn’t everything get translated anyways?” Harry asked, and was delighted to see Hermione frown.

“I guess the spell picks up on intention,” she said, before trailing off. “Oh, damn you, Harry, now I’ll have to research this.”

Ron high-fived Harry while she glowered at them, annoyed.

“How come no one knows where Durmstrang is located, though? The students must know, surely?” Harry continued. “How do you even hide a school?”

“You do realize that Hogwarts is hidden as well? Seriously, you should really know at least this about your own school,” Hermione sighed. “Otherwise, we would get muggles wandering around the grounds all the time. The difference is that Durmstrang is even hidden to wizards, and only students and teachers can see it. I think they’ve even got a special way to get there, so that there is no way to track the location by following the people being transported. The books were a bit unclear about this, though.”

“How come you are so interested about Durmstrang, anyway?” Ron asked, nudging Harry. “They’re all a bunch of Dark Arts practitionners, anyways. Grindelwald went there, you know.”

“Yeah, and Voldemort went to Hogwarts,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes again. “Seriously, Ron, don’t you think it’s a bit easy to put them all in the same bag? We’re not all dark wizards here, they have no more reason to be at Durmstrang.”

“Well, we do have our fair bunch of nasty tossers in Slytherin, though,” Ron shrugged. “Just calling it as I see it.”

“There’s a difference between being a Slytherin and being a dark wizard. Do you think all those first years are bad just because they want to become someone great in the future? Because that’s what ambition means, Ron. You just want to do the best you can for yourself.”

“Well if they didn’t go about it using the Dark Arts, maybe I’d have more respect for them.”

“Can you tell me who in Slytherin you’ve seen using dark magic, ever?” Hermione said, snapping her book close.

“They just don’t do it here because it’s forbidden, but I doubt they have the same drawbacks at home.” Ron crossed his arms, jutting his chin forward mulishly. “They’re good enough at throwing hexes, they don’t even need dark magic anyways.”

“I swear, Ron,” Hermione exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “Sometimes you’re just as bigoted as the ones saying my blood’s dirty. You just don’t want to see it.”

That said, she stormed off the common room to her dormitory, leaving Ron sputtering in fury. He turned to Harry, his anger leaving place to bewilderment.

“What does she mean by that? I’m not as bad as they are, right? You agree with me, don’t you, that studying the Dark Arts is not a good thing?”

“I guess so,” Harry trailed uncertainly. “Doesn’t Viktor Krum goes to Durmstrang, though?”

Ron visibly deflated.

“Well, there’s always an exception to every rule,” he said slowly. Harry could see the idea was disturbing him, and Hermione had already given him enough of a chewing. Ron would mull over it and come to his own conclusion if given some time.

“Chess?” Harry proposed, and was glad to see Ron’s relieved smile at the offer. “Isn’t that new Defense professor weird, though?”

“Mad-Eye Moody? Totally barmy,” Ron confirmed as he set up the pieces to wipe the board with Harry’s arse, as he was wont to do when they played. No matter how hard he tried to teach his best friend the basics of strategy, Harry remained completely impenetrable to the discipline, and only played to entertain him. “Remember what my dad said last time when he said he was attacked? That guy sees enemies everywhere.”

Barmy didn’t even start to describe Professor Moody. The man was absolutely and irrevocably nuts, so paranoid it was a wonder he even managed to get out of bed every morning. Harry wondered how he had been allowed into a teaching position at all given what could at best be described at a shaky mental health. Sure, he might have been one of the greatest Aurors ever at some point, but nowadays he belonged in a therapist’s office or ten, not in a school.

Then again, the record track for the position hinted about the kind of pickings Dumbledore was probably confronted to. Their only decent teacher so far had been a werewolf, and Lupin had explained in so many delicate words that werewolves were amongst the most undesirable employees in the wizarding world. How many applicants were there that Dumbledore had to go and ask someone who didn’t have any other option for employment than take the cursed position? Probably none: after all, the previous two tenants of the position had died horribly, and been Obliviated so thoroughly they didn’t even remember their own name. It did not make for a great advertisement.

By their first week of classes, a rumour was going around the school that he had transfigured a Slytherin student into a toad and bounced them up and down to punish them for trying to hex a student, and had been told off by McGonagall. The reports differed as to which Slytherin it had been, though Ron leant towards Pansy Parkinson, who did have a tendency to go for stinging hexes in the back. No one would confirm, though, and certainly not Parkinson herself.

By the second week, he had demonstrated the three Unforgivable Curses to half the school, and hadn’t that been a truly pleasant lesson. Now Harry had a spell name to go with his nightmare of green light and motherly pleas, which he felt he could have done without, all in all. Neville had gotten out of the classroom in an even worse state than Harry himself, and quite a few students wore haunted looks in the halls for the last half of September. They all wondered whose brillant idea it had been to allow the mad new teacher to demonstrate curses which had last been employed on a large scale during the Wizarding War, from which quite a few students bore familial trauma. Now they had a much clearer idea of how it had all happened. Such a treat. At least the younger years had been spared the education: Moody must have found something else to teach them, because no one from the first to third year had been subjected to his little sound and light show with the fantastic twitching spiders.

By the beginning of October, he had started subjecting the students to – thankfully – the only one Unforgivable they could somewhat survive without too much damage, because apparently it wasn’t so unforgivable as long as it was used as an educative tool. Hermione had quite a few choice words to say about this, and threatened to take it to McGonagall, or even Dumbledore himself, but Harry and Ron managed to dissuade her. For all that his lessons seemed to traumatize some students, the rest of the school seemed to idolize Moody, with the obvious exception of the Slytherins. He returned the sentiment: there was something about the way he treated the Slytherin students, from the smallest to the biggest snake, which showed he expected them to attack someone at any moment, and he would be ready for them. He treated them, overall, the same way he treated the dark creatures he introduced to the third years.

There were two advantages that Harry could see to Moody being… well, Moody. The first one was that he now knew he could resist an Imperius curse. That was useful knowledge, if nothing else. The second one was that Ron was starting to reconsider his position on the great sin of belonging to Slytherin.

All three of them had been more than ready to adore Professor Moody when the twins had come singing his praises and waxing lyrical about their first lesson with him. Hermione, upon hearing about what had happened to Parkinson – alleged victim – had immediately changed her mind. She certainly had no lost love for the Slytherin girl, who had relentlessly mocked her front teeth and bushy hair during their first year:

“But she stopped after a while,” she said when Ron pointed that out during breakfast the next day. “Sure, she was a bully that first year, but ever since second year she’s been mostly focused on defending her House.”

The whole Chamber of Secrets fiasco had not gone well for Slytherin. They had been harassed as the most likely suspects for its opening, except for those periods of time when Harry had taken the prime spot, and had closed rank in response.

“She doesn’t really hex people without a reason, so I doubt she was the only culprit when she got caught,” Hermione continued. “And even if she had been, that punishment was completely over the top. She could have gotten seriously hurt!”

“To think I’d see the day Hermione Granger would defend Pansy Parkinson,” Ron commented with his mouth full, gesturing at Harry to pass the bacon. “The world is coming to an end.”

“You’re a pig,” Hermione informed him. “I stand by what I said. The professors shouldn’t be allowed to punish us in ways that could hurt us. What would you have said if she had ended up with broken bones, or dead?”

“That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?” Ron said with a shrug. “We don’t even know it it was her.”

But they all did throw a surreptitious glance to the Slytherin table, where no Parkinson could be found. Then again, neither Zabini nor Greengrass, with whom she usually hung out, were in attendance either. It could mean nothing at all, or it could mean that Moody’s victim had been one of the three. Their combined absence could mean that Parkinson was sulking it out in the dungeons, or that she had indeed gotten hurt and the others were keeping her company in the infirmary.

“Plus, if she was, how come she’s not raising a big stink about this?” Ron said, pointing his fork at Hermione. “She would never pass up the opportunity to cause trouble for a Hogwarts professor.”

“Maybe because she’s shocked by the fact that someone, supposedly a responsible adult, was allowed to do this to her?” Hermione shot back. “She’s just as human as any of us, she can get scared and hurt, too.”

“Merlin, what’s with you and that sudden campaign for Slytherins? Fancy one of them, do you?”

“I do not _fancy_ any of them, Ronald Weasley, I’m just able to have some empathy for my fellow schoolmates. You should try it, instead of acting like a callous berk,” Hermione said scathingly.

“Fine, fine,” Ron said, raising his hands in defense. “Just saying, it’s weird how you’re suddenly all about Slytherins’ welfare. What’s next, house elves?”

He would come to rue his words in the upcoming weeks, though neither he nor Harry realized it at the time, even when Hermione’s eyes glittered.

But for all his contradictory remarks to her, Harry could see how Ron started to shift uneasily when he saw the way the younger Slytherins scampered every time Moody rounded a corner. Once, the younger Greengrass girl almost rammed into them on her way out of the old Auror’s classroom. Her eyes looked moist and her lower lip was trembling despite her best efforts to control it. The kid was short and cute and the picture of wounded innocence, and Harry felt his heart squeeze at her sight. Ron never stood a chance.

On the last week of October, Ron apologized to Hermione, and acknowledged that maybe, being in Slytherin didn’t automatically make you a minion of Evil. Hermione, who had never been accused by anyone of being a gracious winner, offered to accept his apology if he joined S.P.E.W. That started another round of fighting, but Harry somehow enjoyed the squabbling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so Hermione and Harry do not have the same outlook on Slytherin without Draco as an antagonist to provide a focal point. So Ron is the only one who think very negatively against them, because he's grown with that prejudice. He's gonna change his mind, don't you worry.
> 
> And they all dislike Moody because, even without the creepy impersonation by a Death Eater problem, I always thought the guy was a menace. It didn't make sense to me that so many students liked him when he was basically traumatizing them.


	4. The Auditorium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's only one rule to remember about Durmstrang, as far as Draco is concerned: it's always Rasputin's fault.  
> That, and Karkaroff's speeches are as deadly boring as ever, especially when you already know what he's going to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some further lore about Durmstrang interspersed in here. I do enjoy this school, shame we won't be seeing more of it.

Draco had resisted telling Antoniy about the Triwizard Tournament, and the fact that he would attend, for the whole length of their first afternoon at Durmstrang. He had only hinted that he knew something big while they unpacked their trunks, and that he would be part of it, and overall riled up his roommate nice and good about the whole issue, just for the pleasure of seeing his friend’s indignant face when Karkaroff announced it.

“Sveta, do you know what this little shit is on about? He keeps talking and talking, but will not tell me anything definite,” Antoniy complained to his sister as they joined her in the Auditorium for the headmaster’s welcome speech.

Svetlana was a short and stocky witch in her last year, who always wore her long reddish-brown hair in a low ponytail and always looked vaguely disappointed in you. She was also quite brilliant at duelling, and Draco was confident that she would be amongst the eleven Karkaroff selected to attend the Tournament.

“What has Draco done now?” she sighed, giving them a tired look.

Draco resented that. He was the very picture of an angel, and her ready acceptance of Antoniy’s accusation was perfectly unfair, in his opinion.

“Why, Rasputin, can’t wait for a few minutes?” Draco ribbed, as if he had not been the one playing the mystery up. “You have no patience at all.”

“What are you talking about?” Viktor, who stood beside Svetlana, asked.

“Apparently Karkaroff will announce something of magnitude for this year, according to this inselaffe,” Antoniy said, gesturing at Draco. “But he refuses to tell me anything more than that.”

It was common in pureblood households to raise their children bilingual. For Draco, it had been French, as the Malfoy line had originated there, and an extant branch had survived there until the revolution had uprooted them to the other side of the Channel. Spending so much time with the Rasputin siblings had taught him quite a bit of German, though, which both siblings spoke fluently. Their mother had been some sort of Bavarian Forest countess. By now, Draco could probably hold a decent conversation in German, though most of his vocabulary consisted of swear words. Russian he had given up on learning. He did remember the insults, though. Antoniy had quite the potty mouth, and the translation spell rather pointedly did not include such words.

“Poor little Antoniy can’t handle curiosity or anything that takes longer than half a minute,” Draco cooed, with a meaningful glance at his roommate unpressed uniform. “And _I’m_ the uneducated ape. At least I know how to behave myself in public.”

Svetlana leaned forward, breaking the line, to take a look at her brother. With an aggravated sigh, she flicked her wand at him, and the red robes straightened immediately. She might have even shrinked them a little, if Antoniy’s grimace as he tugged at his collar was any indication. Svetlana had a bit of a vindictive streak.

“You will get a detention before Karkaroff even speaks,” Viktor said in his usual mild manner as Antoniy tried to cuff Draco and Draco ducked.

A glance at the line of professors informed them that yes, a few of them were watching them – Blacklund’s glare promised a thousand torments if they did not stop immediately. They both straightened and linked their hands behind their back, resuming the military stance the headmaster favored. Let it not be said Karkaroff ever thought about his students’ comfort while he went on with his speeches. He probably enjoyed watching them try to avoid squirming and fidgeting as he droned on and on.

Three sonorous bangs echoed as Professor Galdrar, who taught Enchantments and was widely believed to be a vampire, tapped her Seneschal staff against the stone of the floor. Karkaroff emerged from the shadows behind the pulpit in his usual over-dramatic fashion. He paused behind it for a few seconds, looking down his nose at them with his washed-up blue eyes. Draco knew he thought it gave it a powerful air, but he had neither the poise nor the charisma to pull it off, and it only came off as bluster.

He would have suggested taking some pages out of his father’s book, but Karkaroff had been exposed to Lucius Malfoy’s political savvy for years, and it did not seem to have rubbed off on him. To think that the headmaster had been a Deatheater, part of the inner circle of the Dark Lord himself. Draco might not support this philosophy anymore, but wasn’t the entourage of the most powerful dark wizard of this age supposed to be a little less pathetic? And his father might have been as tight-lipped about that period of his life which had preceded the Dark Lord’s fall, Draco still knew quite a bit about it from snooping around Lucius’ – supposedly off-limit to him – study. Was there really any pride in sharing the Dark Mark with the likes of Crabbe, and Goyle, who thought brawn more than amply enough compensated for brains, and were passing down the belief to their sons?

Thinking of the Dark Mark brought his soulmark to mind, and he almost broke stance to trace it over his robes. Wasn’t the Dark Mark just a poor attempt to emulate the old magic of the soulmarks, when you thought about it? To impress upon his followers’ skin the Dark Lord’s belief that he was so impactful in their lives as to forever change them? That was the kind of self-aggrandizing thinking he was prone to, after all.

He must have missed the exact moment Karkaroff switched from his usual spiel about Durmstrang’s greatness, and his own, and how their bloodlines made them better than everyone else, to the actual interesting news. The headmaster never made any changes to his welcome speech, and the only one who actually paid any attention to it were the first years, trying their best not to look bored to the point of tears as they waited desperately to be freed to go to the dining hall.

This year, though, Draco had managed to force one sixth year and two seventh years into listening to the whole speech, just so they would not miss the announcement he had hinted at. That took some skill – and prior access to prime information – and he would be sure to brag about it at the Political club later. The club had a standing tradition of trying to trick other students into uncomfortable or humourous situations without ever lying, and this would put him in a good position to win this year’s contest. Older students were worth more points, as they all knew about the competition, and most of them had identified the members of the club, so they took extra care around them. Getting Svetlana, the current president of the club, was a crowning achievement, and Draco had managed it on the very first day. He would no longer be able to compete after the end of October, so he had to give it its best effort until then.

Antoniy’s sharp elbow to his ribs was a small price to pay for such satisfaction. The insults which followed in Russian only threatened to make Draco smile, but he controlled his expression and kept his impassive attitude and didn’t move an inch. A good little Durmstrang student, he was. Even Blacklund would have found nothing wrong with his posture, and the Duel Professor had been known to use measuring tape and a metal square to teach proper mien.

He could feel Antoniy stewing furiously at his side, and even caught Svetlana fidgeting twice from the corner of his eye. Draco might have been teasing earlier, but it was true that Antoniy had a reserve of patience that was abysmally small. As a rule, it didn’t cause too many problems, because Durmstrang’s curriculum was more than intense enough to provide him with constant stimulation, but he could rarely stand through one of Karkaroff’s speeches without ending up with a detention, and Draco had had to save many of their potions from explosion because Antoniy Rasputin had decided than seven minutes was way too long for the next stir.

Viktor, as usual, remained impeccably still and unperturbed. Really, for all that he despised the status, he truly was the perfect teacher’s pet.

Antoniy elbowed him once again. Draco repressed a wince and turned his head slighty to mouth a “what?” behind clenched teeth.

“That was your big secret?” his roommate whispered furiously, and loud enough that they’d probably end up with detention. Or he would, Draco would have no compunction about pushing him off the broom if the need arised. “A deathly tournament that you’ll take part in.”

Draco rolled his eyes at this. It was like Antoniy forgot who he was talking to.

“I’m not participating in it,” he said, his voice much lower. “I’m just accompanying the delegation.”

“Great, so I’ll be the only one staying here,” Antoniy said mulishly.

There was that. Both Viktor and Svetlana were shoe-ins for Karkaroff’s list, for all that the headmaster was going on about selecting on merit, and no favoritism would be shown, so the seventh years had better give it their all.

“You can flirt with Kaija all your fill, then,” Draco said with a smirk.

This time, the sound of Antoniy’s cuffing him was unmistakable, and a few heads turned to them.

“Malfoy, Rasputin,” Blacklund’s voice whipped across the Auditorium. “Detention.”

Well, he had expected that.

“So, how did your parents manage to get Karkaroff to give up one of his precious positions to take you to Hogwarts?” Svetlana asked as they took possession of one of the smaller tables in the dining hall afterwards, and glared the younger students away.

“Trade secret,” Draco said, reaching for some potato and beef stew.

“So you don’t know,” she surmised.

Kaija plopped down between him and Viktor, saving him from answering.

“You guys heard?” she said, throwing her braids back.

“Kaija, we attended the same Assembly you did,” Svetlana explained patiently.

“Yeah, but you got pinned by Blacklund, so I figured you weren’t paying attention,” she said.

Draco had to admit that it made sense.

“That was Rasputin’s fault,” he said, sipping his glöggi.

“It was not!” Antoniy protested, and, when the Sami girl rose her eyebrow at him, more sulkingly: “It was not.”

“So, you guys trying out?” Kaija asked, ignoring him, and turning to the two seventh year.

“Of course,” Svetlana said. Viktor just nodded. “There’s a thousand galleons prize.”

“What do you need a thousand galleons for?” Draco asked. “Your family is filthy rich.”

“So’s yours, and I don’t think you’d spit on a thousand galleons, would you?” Antoniy shot back.

"Wishing for such a small amount of money, how positively plebeian of you, Rasputin," Draco replied with hauteur.

“I can’t spend the family money anyway I want, we do have a big domain to upkeep,” Svetlana interrupted them before they could get more steam. “And I’d like to go to Australia to study their aboriginal magic rituals. It would be easier to convince my father if I already had most of the money.”

“What about you, Viktor?” Kaija asked.

“I just like a good competition,” he said, shrugging.

Viktor might have been calm and introverted, but he had a competitive streak that would have easily covered the distance between his home country and Durmstrang. Wherever it was. One did not become the youngest seeker ever to catch the snitch in a World Cup by playing sedately.

“Yeah, my money’s on you,” Kaija said. “Sorry, Sveta.”

“You’re a bitch,” Svetlana informed her, which the Sami girl just shrugged off with a laugh.

“Who else do you think will be selected? There’s still ten spots left.”

“Nine,” Antoniy said. “Draco’s father got him a spot, just so he can see his precious family this year. Poor Drasha can’t spend a year away from his mother and father, you see.”

“What? You’ll be leaving me alone with Rasputin, Draco?” Kaija exclaimed, her hand on her heart. “How will I survive your absence?”

Draco smirked at Antoniy, who glared back. That would teach him to mock him around his crush.

“You might find the perspective of Karkaroff’s absence for a year more than enough compensation, but I’ll keep you updated on all the developments during the Tournament, Kaija, I promise. You will feel as if I’ve never left your side,” Draco said. “And you’ll be the first to know about who gets picked as our Champion between Svetlana and Viktor. That will only cost you a tenth of the betting pool.”

Kaija Krysi was known across all years as Durmstrang’s resident bookmaker. She’d steal and cheat you unabashedly, but apparently that was part of the fun.

“Hey, doesn’t that Harry Potter kid attend Hogwarts?” Antoniy said suddenly.

Draco’s heart skipped a beat and he did a quick calculation.

“Yes. He should be starting his fourth year.”

“Grimhildr, Drasha, you lucky bastard. You get to see either Krum or Sveta get pummeled by dangerous beasts and you’ll meet the Boy-Who-Lived,” his roommate sighed. “I wished I could go with you.”

“I’ll try to get you an autographed picture,” Draco smirked, as if the perspective of meeting the kid who had survived the Killing Curse at age one did nothing to him.

It wasn’t like he had grown up hoping he would meet him when he went to Hogwarts, and cried bitterly – and secretly – when his father had decided to send him to Durmstrang instead, robbing him of the chance forever.

“I heard he’s a pretty good seeker,” Viktor said. “Youngest one in a century at Hogwarts.”

No one asked him how he knew that: Viktor always knew the most obscure details about Quidditch, which apparently included non-professional players at a foreign school.

“Maybe we can get him to play a match against us,” Draco said. “We might have enough players to make a team depending on who Karkaroff picks. What do you think, Krum? Want to see if the saviour of the Wizarding World can hold his own against your skill?”

Viktor said nothing, but Draco could see the idea intrigued him. Perhaps it was not nice of him to sick him on a fourteen year-old, but Draco played Chaser himself, and couldn’t very well challenge Harry Potter to a seeker’s match.

By the time the eleven challengers were selected, Krum was listed as the favorite in Kaija’s betting pool, with Svetlana as a close second. Karkaroff had taken Draco appart to remind him to act in a manner befitting of the scion of two old pureblood lines, probably because Rasputin had been caught reading Marx’ Manifesto to unsuspecting first years, and his excuses that he was researching the history of his grandfather’s downfall convinced exactly no one. And Draco’s soulmark had gone from a vague smudge to something very tangible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, a descendant of Rasputin declaiming Marx is my idea of humor. You might have noticed that I'm not taking this fic 100% seriously.
> 
> Next chapter, Hogwarts welcome their exchange students.


	5. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Durmstrang and Beauxbatons arrive, Harry makes a fool of himself, and a fur hat gets stolen. Not necessarilly in this order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Draco gets to Hogwarts.

The students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were scheduled to arrive on the 30th of October. Harry had all but forgotten about it when he sat down in the midst of the excited buzz in the Great Hall that morning. Hedwig had just arrived with a letter from Sirius, confirming, as Harry had feared, that his godfather was on British soil once again, or would be very soon. The twins were planning some mischief involving someone outside of Hogwarts, but they were the only one talking about something else than the upcoming arrival. Even the Slytherin table looked agitated, though in a quieter manner than the other three. Some of the younger ones had not yet managed the dignified bearing of the sixth and seventh years, and Harry stifled a laugh watching them try to emulate the behaviour.

Taking a look around the Hall, he caught sight of Cho Chang, as pretty as ever with her long, smooth dark hair. The Ravenclaw seeker wasn’t looking in his direction, though, nor at any of her comrades. Following her line of sight, he met Cedric Diggory’s eyes, who smiled and winked at him, making a sign towards the Slytherin first years Harry had been observing. The Hufflepuff made a grimace and sat straighter, puffing his chest out to make himself look self-important. Harry snorted, almost inhaled his pumpkin juice, turned to hide and met Cho’s eyes this time, at which point he promptly dribbled whatever juice had not gone down his respiratory tract onto his robes.

“Way to make an impression, Potter,” Seamus mocked him, slapping his back heartily as Harry started coughing. “Who were you looking at, anyway?” he asked, leaning backwards to take a look around Harry’s back with the discretion of an erumpent. “Ah, the pretty Cho Chang,” he said, nodding sagely. “A great choice, my friend. But there will be French girls around soon, so you would be wise to wait before you cast your net.”

There was no good way to explain what had happened in this context, so Harry didn’t try. Seamus would have twisted his words to fit his narrative, and he was too busy being chewed out by Hermione about framing girls as fishes to be captured to attend to any convoluted statement about the truth. Plus, Cho was indeed really pretty. So Harry satisfied himself with patting the front of his robes dry with a towel, half heartedly listening to Dean ribbing Seamus for ever thinking the French girls would be interested in his pale Irish arse, and Neville timidly interjecting that seventeen year-olds were unlikely to even notice their fourteen year-old bunch. This last part made sense, in Harry’s opinion, but both Ron and Seamus vehemently opposed the idea. This brought Lavander and Parvarti into the fray, to cackle at them for ever entertaining the idea, and only McGonagall shooing them out to their first class prevented a food fight.

“Gryffindors,” Harry heard his House Head sigh as they all departed, still bickering amongst themselves. That put a smile on his face for the rest of the morning.

His worries about Sirius might have returned despite all the convenient distraction the arrival of the delegations provided, but their last class, the one that would be shortened so the whole school could stand in rows and try to look like actual teenagers rather than wild animals – those had been McGonagall’s exact words during Transfiguration – was Potions. There was no greater happiness than a shorter Potions class, and nothing could dim it, especially when Snape had been in such a foul mood and threatened left and right to poison someone so they could learn the importance of brewing antidotes properly. Harry thought he might even be able to use the memory for a Patronus. He would have to try that.

Standing outside waiting in the cold of October might have dimmed his enjoyment, but Flitwick had taught them warming charms a month ago, and they were all quite proficient at it now. The first to third years, less so, and after watching them shiver and huddle closer to each other, the upper years started casting some on them as well. Harry was reapplying one on a tiny first year – who may or may not have been the younger Creevey, but he could only see the back of his head and wasn’t too sure – when gasps made him look up. For a moment he could see nothing, and then he distinguished the silhouette of an immense carriage, drawn by winged horses, slightly darker against the night sky. They drew down by the lake, and from there could be seen more clearly: the carriage was powderblue, large as a mansion, looming even over the gigantic pale horses, which looked like they would literally bite the head off of anyone getting into their range. Hagrid would love them, Harry had no doubt.

The first person climbed out of the carriage, an immense woman dressed in elegant black satin robes, whom Dumbledore immediately stepped forward to greet as Madam Maxime. She completely dwarfed the Headmaster, and Harry thought she might have been even taller than Hagrid.

“Hello, Dumbledoor,” she said as she shook his hand with a smile. “I didn’t remember the journey as quite so long. I am getting old.”

Her voice was rich and deep and she talked with a strong French accent, and quite a few students snickered at the way she pronounced the Headmaster’s name. Even Harry barely contained his smile.

While Madam Maxime and Dumbledore went on with the pleasantries, the Beauxbatons students, about thirty of them, were alighting the carriage and arranging themselves in orderly lines in front of the carriage. They wore light blue robes, which shimmered in the moonlight and which, if the way they shivered was any indication, were much too thin for the Scottish autumn weather. They were all very elegant, to be sure, but the tooth-rattling did take away some of the effect. None of them seemed to consider warming charms as a solution, to Harry’s surprise.

“Do not let your students freeze, Olympe,” Dumbledore said with a gesture towards the castle. “Let them get inside before they turn into popsicles.”

He winked at the Beauxbatons students, who looked a bit nonplussed at the familiarity. They looked at their headmistress, and when she nodded, all moved at a calm pace towards the entrance, as if it wasn’t cold enough for them to hurry up. Harry watched them as they passed by: the majority of them looked like seventh years, and were probably old enough to enter their name in the competition. However, quite a few of them looked younger, and Harry even spotted a very pretty blonde girl who couldn’t be older than eleven, surely.

“Blimey, look at that one,” Seamus said under his breath, and whistled softly. Harry followed his glance and spotted an older version of the girl he had just seen, silvery-blonde, tall and willowy, who had apparently gathered the interest of quite a few of the boys. “Got a drop of Veela blood, she sure does.”

“She’s beautiful,” Ron said. He was a bit goggly-eyed. Had there not been three rows of younger Gryffindors in front of him, and as many behind him, Harry rather thought he might have tried to follow her inside the castle.

Well, sure, she was beautiful, but not enough to act like a fool, in Harry’s opinion. He exchanged a glance with Hermione, who rolled her eyes and shrugged, mouthing a very judgmental “boys” at him. Sometimes he wondered if she remembered that he was one, too.

The blue robes of the Beauxbatons students had barely disappeared from sight when there was a flurry of activity at the lake. The waters bubbled aggressively for a few moments. Slowly, a mast broke out the surface, long and dark. Then, magnificiently, the rest of the ship rose out of the water, like a sinking wreck having forgotten in which direction the bottom laid. It looked the part, too: skeletal, somehow, as if its sails remembered torns and holes and the depth of the ocean, and portholes like so many glittering eyes through the fog. It glided towards them, and hoisted itself on the bank. It should have listed, no longer buoyed by the deep waters of the lake, but it remained perfectly upright, its prow proud and straight.

Harry must have blinked at that point, because there now was a gangplank leading from the deck to the ground where there had been none before. A man, reedy thin with short white hair, and ensconsed in brown robes with a heavy fur collar, came down it, followed by twelve students. Where the Beauxbatons delegation had looked underdressed for the weather, the Durmstrang one had the opposite problem. Their robes were dark red, with a flap over the chest and a high collar, and much more closely fitted than Hogwarts robes. Over it they wore heavy capes lined with fur on the inside, and fur caps on their head as well. They were dressed for snow and negative temperatures, and Scotland just wasn’t quite there yet.

“They must be stewing,” Ron giggled as he elbowed Harry. “Look at them, they’ll be as red as their robes in two minutes.”

Hermione shushed him, leaning forward to catch Dumbledore’s greetings. The man, who could only be Durmstrang’s headmaster, didn’t stand as much on ceremony as Madam Maxime had – and the way she pursed her lips at his familiar handshake, she did not approve. His name was Igor Karkaroff, he spoke about dear old Hogwarts like he knew the castle, and immediately asked if they could get inside and warm themselves up, Viktor had a delicate constitution.

None of his students looked in the least in need of being even warmer, and certainly none of them looked _delicate_. But when Karkaroff gestured his precious student forward, Harry understood why he was so solicitous to him. And if he hadn’t, the way Ron’s nails immediately dug into his forearm as he breathed an ecstatic “Harry… It’s Viktor Krum!” would have erased any doubt.

Krum did not move on the ground with anywhere near the same grace he did on a broom, but he did retain some of his eye-catching qualities despite it. Tall but standing a bit hunched, with his dark hair and eyes and his hooked nose, he looked like some overgrown bird of prey. A bit ungainly, but definitely dangerous. He stood near Karkaroff with a sullen look, as if he greatly disliked being singled out. Harry could sympathize.

The Durmstrang delegation started moving towards the castle at Dumbledore’s behest, and as the group approached them, Harry heard a voice, smooth and jeering:

“Have you seen his face?” the guy snickered. “I swear, one of these days Karkaroff will try to clap him on the back like they’re such great friends, and Viktor will tear off his arm.”

“He has it coming,” one of the girls answered. “Grimhildr takes him, I am sveating like I am cooking in furnace.”

“Well, I told him, didn’t I?” the guy replied. “You’d think he’s the one who’s lived in Britain his whole life, the way he went on about how we needed to be ready for the wilderness of Hogwarts. Like it ever gets as cold as Durmstrang here.”

“It vas snoving heavily vhen ve left,” the girl pointed out, and her tone of voice indicated that she was very, very tired of that argument.

“Yeah, and we’ll be lucky to see snow in January here. Oh, just take it off, Svetlana,” the boy snapped, snatching the girl’s hat off her head.

“Drasha, you horrid little imp, my hair iz sticking everyvhere now!” The girl – Svetlana – complained.

“You’ll live,” the guy said, rolling his eyes. They drew to Harry’s height, and just at the moment where the boy took his own hat off, and his pale blond hair glinted in the moonlight. He recognized it in a jolt of surprise, and then the face under it, slightly turned towards him with a laugh on it as Draco Malfoy, the boy from the top box at the Quidditch World Cup, held the two hats out of reach of his friend’s grasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Svetlana has an accent in Hogwarts that she didn't have in Durmstrang. There's a (possible) explanation coming, as I'm trying to reconcile my headcanons for Durmstrang with the actual canon accents in the books.


	6. Harry Potter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their first dinner at Hogwarts is very informative, in Draco's opinion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry has zero chill.  
> This will be a common occurrence.

“Zeir translation spell is horrible”, Svetlana said as the Durmstrang delegation made its way in the castle and they all started to realize that if their comrades sounded so strange to their ears, then they probably did as well. “I don’t even vant to know vat I sound like to you.”

“Like you have a very strong russian accent,” Draco said.

He had never been so glad to be a native English speaker. The other students sounded completely different than they used to at Durmstrang.

“I can’t even understand vy it is so bad,” Svetlana said. “I do not even have zat much of accent vhen I speak English!”

“Well, English is the first language for the large majority of the students here,” Draco said. “They probably don’t need the translation spell all that much, to be fair. That’s not to say we should excuse their incompetence, though. They could have looked for a more efficient one.”

“Huuum. Or maybe ze spell is not used to foreign languages yet,” she mused. “So it can’t accurately compensate for sounds zat don’t exist in Russian.”

“Well, feel free to torture you little mind about it,” Draco said, with a dismissive wave at her. “I, for one, do not care.”

No one could care about the minutiae of ancient enchantments as much as Svetlana Rasputin, anyway. If you let her, she would talk your ear off for hours, and keep at it even if you fell facedown in your soup bowl from boredom. Draco had learned early on to prevent such diatribes by expressing his disinterest loud and clear.

“Zeir castle is much larger zan ours,” she commented after rolling her eyes at him.

“The grounds are not, and the forest on the edge is forbidden to the students,” Draco said, who had read it in Hogwarts: a History when he still thought he would attend.

“Vy?” Svetlana asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Too many magical beasts, they’re afraid the students would get hurt.”

“Don’t zey know how to defend zemselves?”

Draco could see how such measures would sound ridiculous to a Durmstrang student. Viktor probably owed his flying prowess in part to the training he got escaping the Norwegian Ridgebacks which inhabited the mountains marking their grounds’ Southern limit. Avoiding a forest because of a few centaurs seemed like nonsense, especially when you could just talk yourself out of any problem with them if you showed enough respect.

“They do have Defense against the Dark Arts classes, but the rumour mill has the position as cursed, and no one stays more than one year. They had to hire Gilderoy Lockhart at some point,” Draco explained, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

He had met the man once, whose head had been as empty as his words were colorful. One had to admire his skill at obfuscating the truth, though, because no one suspected his books as filled with lies. Svetlana agreed with him that at least some of those stories sounded far-fetched, and it was impossible than one man had done it all, if only because some events he described seemed to have occured at the same time but at very different locations. They were part of different books, though, and Draco had only examined them in depth because he was a suspicious grinch, according to Antoniy, and Svetlana because she loved nothing more than looking up obscure details that interested no one else but her – again, according to Antoniy.

“Poor dears,” Svetlana said. “vell at least zey’ve got a grand castle to compensate for the lack of outside space. Look at zat entrance hall, it must be as vide as the Auditorium.”

It was, indeed, quite big, and filled with Beauxbatons students in silky blue robes. With the Hogwarts students that were following on their heels, the entrance hall, large as it was, was starting to be filled to the brim with excited teenagers.

“Step inside, do not stand on ceremony!” a voice called from behind – Dumbledore, of course, with Karkaroff and the giant Beauxbatons headmistress. Krum was dragging his feet behind them, watching the floor sullenly as if it would provide his deliverance. Draco snickered and waved his wand to send a soft stinging hex to him, just enough to get his attention. Really, that had been done with the best of intentions, no need to glare at him so.

He motionned to Viktor to join them and, after a glance showed him that Karkaroff was deep into conversation with Dumbledore and could not prevent his escape, the lumbering fool made his way to them.

“I thought he vould never let go of me,” he whinged as he drew near them. “I vish he vould leave me alone.”

Draco snorted, which owed him Svetlana’s elbow in the ribs.

“Vot?” Viktor asked, bewildered.

“Nozing,” she said. “Zeir translation spell is messing viz our accents and Drasha zinks it is all very droll.”

“It is extremely amusing. You two sound like you’ve got a nasty cold. I can brew you some Pepper-Up, if you need.”

“You are not as funny man as you zink you are, Draco Malfoy,” Svetlana said.

“Sure I am. You are just not able to appreciate the brilliance of my wit,” he replied. “Come now, I know a few Slytherins, we can sit with them.”

They sat with Pansy Parkinson, whom Draco knew since infancy, though they had never been particular friends. Two years was a big age gap for kids, especially between different genders. However, the girl had befriended Blaise Zabini, the heir of multiple great fortunes from his mother’s successful streak of marriages and widowhoods, and the eldest Greengrass girl, so she had not done so badly for herself. She had a shrill and annoying voice, but a dry, very caustic sense of humor that immediately got her Draco’s and Svetlana’s approval. The way she described the different Hogwarts professors, Houses and students of her year was nothing short of hilarious, though Draco noticed she carefully skirted against the name Moody. The old Auror’s name was legendary enough that Draco had his suspicions on why the whole Slytherin table seemed to collectively draw back everytime his second, real eye turned in that direction.

“So vat about Harry Potter?” Svetlana asked. “Ve’re all very interested in him.”

“Oh, him,” Pansy said, affecting her most vapid air. “What do you want to know?”

She seemed to relish being the centre of attention of older students, and from the way the rest of her House looked at her, she had gained a lot of respect for getting three Durmstrang students to sit with her, especially when it included Viktor Krum. Draco would not begrudge her her moment of glory, and the way she was milking it for all its worth.

“Is he a good seeker?” Viktor asked, because of course that was the question that came to his mind first.

The girl obviously did not care a fig about the sport, but if entertaining a Quidditch star enhanced her status, she certainly wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Draco, who was pretty sure he had seen a redheaded Gryffindor close to fainting when Viktor had walked by him, thought that, even if she did not appreciate the situation for its own sake, she sure understood its sheer social value.

“I guess so,” she said, trailing uncertainly.

To their surprise, it was the Greengrass girl, Daphne, who came to her rescue. She had looked completely uninterested in their conversation so far, and kept glancing at another table when she thought no one would catch her.

“He’s never lost a match, except for that one time with the Dementors,” she drawled – she had a delicate voice, but the way she carefully enunciated each words made it sound like she was permanently bored with everything. “And he became his team’s seeker on our first flying lesson, when he caught Longbottom’s Remembrall. He had never flown a broom before that.”

She was almost animated by the end of her speech. That sounded very much like a good old fashioned crush to Draco’s ears, who considered himself quite the expert on the subject after three years of dealing with Rasputin’s pathetic pining for Kaija Krysi.

“That sounds good,” Viktor said which, in Viktor-speak, meant he was extremely impressed.

Draco had to admit he was, too. He considered himself, without false modesty, an excellent flier, but he had hopped on his first broom at the tender age of five – his mother would not hear of it before that – and Viktor had known how to steer one before he even learned to walk. Legend had it that his first word had been neither Mum or Dad, or whatever the words were in Bulgarian, but broom.

“And how is he, outside of Quidditch?” Svetlana asked, and Draco could have kissed her.

“The most Gryffindor to ever Gryffindor,” Zabini said, rolling his eyes. “It’s like the guy was born with the survival instinct of a niffler, really.”

“What Blaise means,” Pansy interrupted, glaring at her friend. “Is that Potter and his friends have a tendency to attract attention.”

“Zat’s not very surprising, given how vell known he is,” Svetlana pointed out.

This launched a lengthy explanation of all the exploits Harry Potter and his friends – a Weasley and a muggleborn called Granger – had been involved in during their three previous years, which did make for an impressive list considering the short amount of time they had had to perform them. Some sounded quite far-fetched, and had likely grown deformed with the rumour: Harry Potter had killed their Defense teacher during their first year, Harry Potter had met Nicolas Flamel and been given his philosopher’s stone, Harry Potter was a Parseltongue, Harry Potter had killed a basilisk with his bare hands, Harry Potter had killed Sirius Black, faithful servant of the Dark Lord, and hidden his body while the murderer awaited the Dementor’s kiss, and so forth and so forth. For a fourteen year-old, he certainly sounded larger than life.

“It’s all true,” Pansy insisted when Draco raised his eyebrow at her. “I heard him speak to that serpent Snape made me conjure during Dueling Club, we all did.”

Her friends corrobated all of her stories, except the one about Sirius Black. Daphne Greengrass seemed to think that the infamous trio of Gryffindor had facilitated his escape by also freeing a hippogriff awaiting execution. Her friends both scoffed at her.

“Well, no one knows what happened to Buckbeak, either, and he disappeared at the same time!” Daphne defended herself. “Remember, Mr Crabbe was very displeased that he would not be punished for hurting Vincent.”

“If Vincent had not tried to rip one of the beast’s feathers, he would not have been injured at all,” Blaise sniffed. “And you only believe that because you don’t want to believe that Potter’s godfather is a mass murderer.”

“It would be so very sad if it were true, though, wouldn’t it?” Daphne said, turning beseeching eyes toward Draco.

Yep, definitely crushing hard on the Potter boy, that girl. He couldn’t help but think she was onto something, though. His mother had always expressed a lot of surprise at the thought that her cousin had betrayed the Potters to the Dark Lord, as he had always rejected the _Toujours pur_ words of the House of Black. He had gone to Gryffindor, and trampled his family’s beliefs so thoroughly that Narcissa’s aunt Walburga had burnt his name off the family tree when he had run away at sixteen. It was hard to reconcile this version of Sirius Black with the image of a faithful Deatheater. An allegiance to the Dark Lord would have gotten him his place back on the tree, as well as his inheritance and, insofar as anyone knew, no such measures had been taken. Of course, it wasn’t as if anyone could go and check the tapestry, with Grimmauld Place closed to anyone since the disappearance of Regulus Black.

“It is very sad,” Draco agreed, because Daphne was obviously expecting an answer. “But whether Potter killed him, or helped him escape, it sounds like a lot of work for such a young kid. What does that fearsome sorcerer look like, hum? He must be at least twelve feet tall,” he joked.

“Potter? More like underfed and ungroomed,” Pansy said acidly. “It’s a wonder whether his muggles even fed him anything before he got here. Look at him, a breeze could knock him over.”

She gestured at the Gryffindor’s table, to a cluster of fourth years laughing and messing about. There was a bushy haired girl who looked about to go off on a sanctimonious rant, the redheaded kid that had almost fainted for Viktor earlier – he had to be the Weasley friend, that was a truly appalling number of freckles –, a blonde girl and an Indian girl with their heads close, and a black boy who was about to drop something down the shirt of his neighbour, turned to talk to a pair of redheaded twins – Merlin, how many were they? – while the rest of the table watched on with an anticipatory gleam in their eyes. And, next to the bushy haired girl, his eyes dancing with merriment at his friend’s antics, there was a cute brown-skinned kid with messy hair and thin wrists peeking out of his dark robes.

The black kid had dropped his projectile, and his victim yelped and stood up, squirming to get rid of whatever squishy, sticky substance had gone down his back. In the ensuing mess, Draco met the eyes of that last Gryffindor boy he had noticed, vivid green against the brown skin, as he leaned away from the wild moves of his classmate with a wild laugh. This caused his hair to shift, the curls sliding to the side and parting to reveal the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, at the exact moment when Draco realized he had seen this boy before, in a high room over a stadium full of screaming supporters.

Harry Potter watched him with the same slightly puzzled expression he had sported when Draco had smiled at him while his mother brushed imaginary lint off his shoulders. Amused, Draco waved at him, just barely, and, to his utter surprise, the boy’s skin darkened and he ducked his head to hide it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have my complete outline, pretty much (rewrites are so much easier, I must say).  
> A lot of events from the books won't be described, because you all already know what happens, and, well, I'm only interested in Draco flirting with Harry, basically.
> 
> Next chapter, they actually talk together.


	7. The four Champions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is having a very bad day, and Malfoy is not making it any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They meet!  
> And it doesn't go quite as well as Draco planned.

Harry was not having a good day. If he was honest with himself, his bad stroke had started the day before, when Draco Malfoy had smiled and waved at him and instead of returning the gesture like a normal person, Harry’s first reflex had been to dive under the table. He had repressed the instinct, and only averted his gaze, but still, when he had risked another glance back at the Slytherin table, the Durmstrang student had resumed his conversation with the eldest Greengrass sister. Sure, she was pretty enough, if you liked the expressionless sort, but she seemed so _boring_. Yet even Viktor Krum seemed interested in what she was saying, and Draco Malfoy was listening to her in such a focused way it must have been uncomfortable.

So yeah. Harry had not been in a good mood when he had woken up that morning, because he was a bit tired of making a fool of himself of front of, it seemed, every older student he met those days. The twins’ failed attempt at crossing the Age Line had been a good laugh, but he had missed the Durmstrang students putting their names in the Goblet. They must have gotten up very early, or they had done it during the night and were still on their ship, because none of them could be spotted in the Great Hall during breakfast.

On the contrary, Madam Maxim waited until the tables had been cleared, and clapped her big hands to draw the attention of her students. Half of the delegation from Beauxbatons rose and formed a line in front of the Goblet. The first one to put her name in was Fleur Delacour, that part-Veela girl who had such a strong effect on some of the boys, Ron included. When she walked back to Ravenclaw’s table, the young girl who looked so much like her beamed at her, and she returned the gesture by stroking her sister’s hair quickly. It was sweet, especially the way the younger girl glanced adoringly at Fleur. Somehow it softened Harry’s impression of her, of the snobbish girl who had seemed to only find things to sneer at in Hogwarts.

That evening the Cup gave the names of the Champions.

It started well enough: the food was good, and Harry tried a few of the foreign dishes mixed in with the usual offerings of the Halloween feast. The cheese soufflés, the burgundy beef and the goulash were nice, but the pickled herrings were atrocious and he declined the offer for bouillabaise. Ron tasted everything and pronounced everything delicious, but they all suspected him of not having the same sense of taste as normal people, based on the weird combinations he was sometimes seen eating.

They had dessert, and Harry had a hard time choosing which ones to try: on that front he had no hesitation about testing everything, and it all proved immensely good. Treacle tart remained his favourite nonetheless, though he only managed one small piece after stuffing himself with so much food.

He was close to a sugar-induced coma when Dumbledore rose and clapped his hand to call for attention. The ceremony to appoint the three Champions started with Fleur Delacour’s name being called. Harry, who had not been looking at the Beauxbatons champion but at her little sister, smiled when she applauded excitedly. Then the Cup produced Viktor Krum’s name for Durmstrang, and Harry watched avidly as he rose from the Slytherin table, where Malfoy were smirking at him and apparently needling his friend so much the girl who sat with them cuffed him on the head and glared him down when he tried to protest. At least he didn’t look annoyed not to be selected.

Harry cheered avidly when Cedric’s name came out for Hogwarts, jumping to his feet with the rest of the Gryffindor table as Hufflepuff gave a huge hurrah. Cedric stood, laughing and golden, and waved at everyone as he made his way to the room where the Champions were to gather.

And then, of course, _of course_ , the Cup sputtered some more flames, and another paper, and of course, _of course_ , everyone heard the shock in Dumbledore’s voice as he read Harry’s name. Harry didn’t even know why he even bothered to wish for a normal life anymore.

The next day, Ron still refused to speak to him, and everyone else wanted to know how he had done it. Hermione, the only one to believe him, promised she would try to find a way for him to step down from his unwanted position as fourth Champion in a _Tri_ wizard Tournament. She made it clear, however, with the situation being truly exceptional as it was, there might not be a loophole to be found.

So, down two friends for the foreseeable future, and unwilling to spend time with others who, while not hostile, still didn’t trust him to tell the truth, Harry grabbed his Firebolt and headed to the Quidditch pitch. His bad luck held, though, and when he got there, he saw it was already occupied. With a jolt, he recognized Krum’s unmistakable form, and the striking hair of Draco Malfoy. They were taking turns with the quaffle, one defending the goals while the others attempted to score. Krum flew with a grace that simply did not translate to the way he moved on the ground, but on a broom, oh, he was magnificient. Malfoy didn’t pale much in the comparison: he was obviously an excellent player, and much more at ease with the red ball than Krum was. He was calling taunts at his friend, his smile wide and uncomplicated, and with the wind in his air and the way his eyes shone, he looked particularly arresting.

Harry turned on his heels when he realized he had been staring. The movement seemed to catch Malfoy’s eyes, and he swooped down to the field, coming to a stop right beside Harry.

“Hey! You’re Harry Potter, right?” he greeted, casually leaning against his Nimbus.

He was wearing black Quidditch gear, but had forgone the overcoat, and it emphasized his lean frame. Harry felt crummy, in comparison, in his Gryffindor gear.

And how the hell did Draco Malfoy even know his name?

Right. Bloody champion of the Triwizard Tournament. Just nod, Harry.

“I’m Draco Malfoy,” the boy said, trusting his hand forward.

Harry shook it warily, glad that they were both wearing their gloves and that Malfoy wouldn’t be able to feel his clammy skin.

“I know,” he said before thinking, then promptly swore at himself.

“Oh?” Malfoy said with a raised eyebrow and a shit-eating grin, looking very pleased with himself. “Famous, am I?”

“I… It’s just that you were at the World Cup, and, er, your father and Mr Weasley know each other,” Harry mumbled. “Mr Weasley is my friend’s dad,” he added, as if Malfoy really needed to know that, then remembered that Ron wasn’t really considering him a friend right now, and grimaced.

“And I made an impression, didn’t I?” Malfoy said, his grin widening even more.

Harry blushed and looked at his feet, resolved not to say a word more. At least if he stayed silent he wouldn’t be putting his foot in his mouth.

“Well, nevermind,” the Durmstrang boy brushed it off. “I’m more interested in how you got past that age line! That was bloody brilliant, and even Svetlana can’t figure out how you did it, and she’s a whizz at enchantments. My father’s always going on about how Dumbledore is an old goat and a fluke, but I didn’t believe it until now. I mean, a fourth year got the drop on him, that is such a lark!”

Just like that, Harry’s embarassement disappeared, and rage replaced it.

“I am so glad you think this is funny. It’s not like I could die in those bloody trials, or be seriously injuried, or anything like that. What’s mortal danger compared to a good laugh, right?” he spat, glaring at Malfoy as the boy looked at him with his eyes round with surprise. “I hope you have a grand old time watching me fail terribly. At least one of us will be enjoying this, and you’ll be sure I’m not a threat to your own champion in that way.”

He spun on his heels and stalked away, blinking his eyes fiercely to keep the angry tears at bay.

“Vat happened?” he heard a rough voice ask behind him. “Vy is he leaving like that?”

“I don’t know,” Malfoy answered, and then there was the sound of someone running after him. “Potter! Hey, Potter, wait!” Malfoy called.

Harry debated running away, but he wasn’t sure he could withstand the humiliation. Plus, he didn’t trust himself not to faceplant, and that would the cherry on top of the shite pie his life had been for the past two days. He walked faster, but Malfoy had the advantage of longer legs and not hesitating in taking this into a run.

As soon as Harry felt the hand on his arms, he whirled around, glaring at the Durmstrang boy with as much intensity as he could muster. He had been told a few times it was quite a lot, and it did not fail him here: Malfoy snatched his hand back as if burnt, and looked very much as if he had had to fight down the urge to take a step back.

“I didn’t do it,” Harry growled between clenched teeth. “Here, satisfied? You can go back to your friends and tell them there is no special trick, I don’t know how my name got into that thrice-damned goblet because I _didn’t do it_.”

“Oh,” Malfoy said, and he scratched the back of his neck with a lost expression. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

Harry deflated. Of course he couldn’t have known: Harry had only told the Gryffindors, and even they didn’t believe him. The Hufflepuffs thought he was trying to steal Cedric’s thunder, the Slytherins hated him on principle, and the Ravenclaws either didn’t care or sided with the rest of the school, but no one had even asked him what had happened. Of course the foreign students had heard nothing more about it.

“Sorry I took it out on you,” he sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I’ve just been having a really crappy couple of days.”

“I can see that,” Malfoy said, looking uncomfortable. He suddenly grinned: “Why don’t you fly with us? That’s bound to make you feel better, and you can boast about flying with Viktor Krum, seeker extraordinaire. He can probably give you some tips too, if you can get him to talk. Once he starts, though, he’s unstoppable,” he added, leaning to whisper this in Harry’s ear confidentially, though Krum was much too far from them to hear.

Harry shivered.

“What do you think?” Malfoy said again, gesturing a circle at the pitch, at Krum standing with a bewildered expression and a broom in each hand, and finishing with a flourish at him.

“I-” Harry cleared his throat when his voice came out embarassingly small and high pitched. “Sure, I guess.”

“Brilliant. We can check with our own eyes if your skills are up to your reputation, then,” Malfoy smirked, already stalking back to the pitch. “Come now, Potter,” he said over his shoulder, but Harry was already following him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes Draco, Harry has a mouth on him, doesn't he?  
> I like the idea of them bonding over Quidditch. And yes, Draco plays chaser: no competition with Harry to steer him to the seeker position, and he's not that much of a glutton for punishment that he'd try to compete with Viktor.
> 
> Next chapter, onwards to the First Task.


	8. The First Task

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The First Task is dragons. Draco really has to wonder about the sanity of all the organizers of this bloody tournament.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco is a drama queen (which we all knew) and tries to give badges to everyone.

“You do know you’re supposed to cheer for our champion, not Hogvarts’?” Svetlana said as she installed herself on the other side of the Slytherin table.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Draco said airily, helping himself to mashed potatoes.

Svetlana pointed at the badge he was sporting on the breast of his uniform, who alternatively blinked _Go Potter_ _!_ or a ligthning bolt, in gold over red. The Gryffindor colors matched surprisingly well with Durmstrang’s.

“Oh, that,” he said, like he had forgotten about it.

“Yes, Drasha, zat. You spent half ze evening spelling zat zing to be as visually loud as possible yesterday. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Well, the kid needs all the support he can get, doesn’t he?” Draco flicked the badge and the colors exchanged. “Plus, I had to show them how shoddy their workmanship was. Their Charms teacher must be truly appalling, really, if that was the best they could do.”

The majority of Hogwarts students had taken to wearing badges which switched between _Go Diggory!_ in Hufflepuff colors and _Potter stinks!_ in Slytherin ones, up to and including some of Potter’s Housemates. Draco had taken one look at the way the boy’s faced had closed on spotting it, and felt like accio _ing_ and burning the lot of them down immediately.

“It is bad taste,” Svetlana acknowledged with a sniff. “I vonder vo did it.”

Draco had a pretty good idea himself, from the fact that Pansy Parkinson and her friends had taken one look at his chest when they had joined lunch, exchanged guilty looks and hurried down the table to sit as far away from him as possible.

“I could make you one too, you know,” he offered.

“I vill not vear a badge for Hogvarts,” Svetlana said flatly. “I am supporting Viktor, you know, like a good friend should.”

“Krum has more than enough fans already, he can do without me,” Draco brushed her off. “Besides, he doesn’t mind, do you, Viktor?” He nudged the man himself, who was currently absorbed in watching something with the same intent face he always sported during one of his matches. “He would even wear the badge if I made him one, wouldn’t you, Viktor?” he added when that got him no reaction.

“I vould not,” Viktor said, rising from the bench.

“He’s lying,” Draco informed Svetlana. “Where are you going?”

“Library,” Viktor said curtly.

“Again?” Draco asked, raising his eyebrow at Svetlana, who returned his expression with a shrug. “You’ve been spending all your time there, is it that interesting?”

Viktor did spend a reasonable amount of time in the library at Durmstrang, as any top student tended to do, but he had never been a full on library rat. Two days ago he had even rejected Draco’s offer to go for a fly in favor of books, of all things. Draco had had to go one on one against Potter in a seeker’s game, and the kid had absolutely whooped his ass at it. He even had had the gall to laugh at Draco’s lack of skill at spotting the – incredibly tiny and fast, Draco wished to point out – snitch, like everyone could be genius teenage seekers like him and Krum. At least he hadn’t been brooding in silence about all the woes in his life, which had been really tiring on Draco, really, what with all the negativity, and that was the only reason he had let Potter snort at him without retaliation.

“Not as many fans there,” Viktor said, but he was mumbling, which was a sure mark of him lying, and Draco perked up in interest.

Viktor must have sensed the danger, because he left it at that, and prompty walked away. And right before Draco spotted the bushy mass of hair of Potter’s muggleborn friend disappearing through the Great Hall’s doors – what was her name already? She had even sat in the stands once during one of their friendly games, reading an enormous book – too, the spoilsport.

“Svetlana,” he stage-whispered at her in mock horror. “I think our little Viktor is also turning traitor on you. He’s got a crush, and on one of Potter’s friends, too!”

Svetlana’s eyebrows rose so high they could have flown off her forehead, and she looked distinctly unimpressed.

“What?” Draco said.

“Are you really mocking Viktor for having a crush on a Hogvarts fourz year? Really, Drasha? Zat’s a bit rich, coming from you.”

Draco sputtered indignantly.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, gathering his wounded dignity and trying very hard not to look in the direction of Gryffindor’s table.

“Sure you don’t,” Svetlana said, agreeably. “And, Drasha, vord of advice? You should stop calling him kid, it makes you sound like a pervert.”

Draco could only gape at her as she swept away to join the seventh year Slytherins for their Advanced Charms class.

The first Task was approaching fast, and still no one had the slightest inkling of what may befall the Champions. Draco had tried to find out about it, even writing to his mother to covertly ask her to interrogate Lucius, but nothing was forthcoming. He was starting to get a bit miffed about it, too. There was no way that, in an event of this magnitude, which involved so many people in its organization, no one was willing to spill the beans for a few galleons. Surely someone would talk, even if just to give him – them, the Champions, he meant – a hint.

And he knew Viktor would acquit himself honorably, whatever those sadictic organizers had in store for them, but he didn’t exactly feel the same sanguine confidence for Harry. The boy was only fourteen, Merlin’s beard, and the Tournament was notorious for the grievous injuries sustained by its past participants. Potter deserved a little help, was all that Draco was saying.

They had grown, not close exactly, but certainly friendly enough in the three weeks since Draco’s arrival. Potter seemed ill-suited for fame, always trying to slink back when too many people paid him attention, and between his current position as unexpected fourth Champion and Rita Skeeter’s, may she burn in fiendfyre, campaign against him, compounded by his status as the Boy-Who-Lived, he was attracting a lot of it.

So he had taken to spending a lot of time hiding out on the grounds with Draco.

They didn’t see much of each other during the day. Draco was attending sixth year classes – five of them, picked amongst the NEWT offerings – and Karkaroff had assigned all the Durmstrang students a special project to keep them from “slacking off”. It was, for all intents and purposes, an extended version of the Practicals they usually took in February back at school, but Draco, as the only sixth year student, couldn’t very well be paired with anyone. Not that he would have been able to, anyway: since Krum’s participation in the Tournament was considered his Practical, the ten remaining students had quickly paired off with each other. Even Svetlana, that backstabbing cow.

“I am not risking my final evaluation to hold your hand zrough a sevenz year Practical, Drasha,” she had said, and that had been the end of it.

Fortunately for him, Draco was nothing if not resourceful – and well connected. It had taken barely more than fifty minutes to convince Severus Snape of taking him as a sort of apprentice for the year, forty of which had been spent proving he could brew a perfect antidote to common poisons in half the usual required time.

It all meant that Draco was pretty much swamped in work, and he had been a fool to think that Hogwarts was an easy school just because they had breaks and shorter study days than in Durmstrang. There were no Dark Arts or Dueling classes, but Defense against the Dark Arts seemed like a weird mix of the two, and though that tosser Moody seemed to hate him on sight, the class was intense and interesting. Alchemy and Advanced Arithmancy had a curriculum just far enough from what he had been taught that they were kicking his ass, and if he had thought he could relax with Herbology and Transfiguration, he had been severely mistaken. Then after he was done, he had to head to the Potions laboratory to work on his Practical, or to the library to try and catch up with his new yearmates. That usually left him one or two free hours in the evening, and Harry always seemed to randomly pop up in his vicinity around that time.

Draco would firmly deny any accusation that he also seemed to randomly hang out in areas where Potter had been known to loiter around that time, no matter how many times Svetlana repeated them.

He did, however, relish Viktor’s dismayed face when he announced that he had invited Potter to go to Hogsmeade with them, and that his muggleborn friend would join. Granger, her name was Hermione Granger, and it was great fun watching Viktor try to pronounce her name and fail miserably. There was no way to blame the translation spell for that one.

Svetlana, that cow, declined to accompany them on what she dubbed their little double-date.

And it was all going very well, except that Viktor was so tongue-tied he appeared to be glowering, until they crossed paths with that ginger friend of their two companions in the Three Broomsticks. Weasley – which one was it, already? – had taken one look at Krum, another one at Draco, then a common one of utter betrayal at Granger and Potter and the four butterbeers in front of them, and turned heels to drag the rest of their Housemates out of the pub.

“The charm work on your badge is really precise,” Granger said bravely, after long minutes of tense silence.

“I can make you one, if you want,” Draco offered, still trying to catch Harry’s eye, who kept on glowering at the floor.

“I’d rather try to recreate it by myself. Can I see it, please?” she asked, holding out her hand politely.

She was alright, that Granger girl, even without the added benefit of providing teasing material against Viktor.

Dragons. The first Task was stealing an egg from a bloody dragon. A nesting bloody female dragon.Draco would have gotten splinters in his hands had he not been wearing his dragonhide gloves, so fiercely he clutched the guardrail of the stands when the surprise was revealed.

They had warded the whole Task area, so no one could intervene to help the Champions during the trial, except for the jury if worse came to worse. Forget helping the Champions, though, Draco would have hexed the shit out of those five nutjobs, and the only thing preventing him from doing so were the bloody wards.

Diggory went first, against a Swedish Short-Snout. He took one look around him, spotted a large rock, and transfigured it into a dog. It started barking and jumping wildly at the dragon, who turned her large head to consider this new addition with narrowed eyes and fuming nostrils. Meanwhile, Diggory sneaked around her, careful not to touch the tailwhich curled protectively around the nest as he bent to retrieve the golden egg. He drew back, and was almost far enough to bolt out of the arena, when something must have caught the dragon’s attention, because she swiveled around, spotted him with the egg, and breathed flames at him. A great gasp went over the stands, but Diggory had the excellent reflexes of a Quidditch player, and he jumped sideways, rolling to the floor out of the arena, the egg still clutched in his arms. When he got up, they could see that the side of his face had been burnt, but it was nothing that a good Healer couldn’t fix. He was done with his first Task.

“He knew,” Draco whispered, watching as the Hufflepuff was led out of the stadium.

“Vat?” Svetlana asked by his side.

“He knew it would be a dragon. That’s not the kind of transfiguration you can do so easily,” he said. “You need to train for it to be so smooth, and there’s no reason to repeat transfiguring a rock into a dog, it’s bloody useless in everyday life. He knew, so he cheated.”

“Vell, dragons are pretty hard to hide,” Svetlana pointed out. “And aren’t Hufflepuffs supposed to be all about fairness and loyalty? Maybe he told Harry?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m hoping for,” Draco said, as he crossed Granger’s wide worried eyes across the stands. “Because I’m pretty sure that if Diggory could figure it out, Karkaroff and Maxime certainly did, and you bet your arse they told Viktor and Delacour.”

The Beauxbatons Champion was next, against a Welsh Green, and did quite well, in Draco’s opinion. Her sleeping enchantment was inspired, and probably the best solution overall, but it didn’t take much to realize she hadn’t had time to properly master it when the dragon woke up and singed her clothes. Draco couldn’t understand why she scored less than Diggory when she had only gotten some fabric, rather than her _face_ , burnt off, but he was pretty sure that had to do with the judges playing favorites.

When Viktor entered the arena opposite a Chinese Fireball, all of the Durmstrang students collectively leant forward, their breaths hitched in anticipation. In the true style of their school, Viktor attacked the problem rather aggressively, and his conjunctivis curse hit the dragon with masterful precision. They all winced, however, when the Fireball roared and stepped back, smashing half of her nest under her weight. The loss of what must have been at least three eggs would have gotten them a Distressing To Watch grade at the very least, had they been evaluated on such a task back at school. Of course, Karkaroff’s partiality could always be counted on, and Viktor ended up with the highest rating yet, since he had not been hurt himself, and had retrieved the egg in less time than the previous two participants. Draco spotted his dejected expression as he left the arena, though: no matter his first place, he was disappointed in his performance.

And finally, finally, it was Harry’s turn.

Draco could have screamed, or cried, when they led the Hungarian Horntail into the arena. Trust Potter’s luck to draw the most dangerous, most aggressive species of dragons for his Task. That was just on par with the rest of his life, wasn’t it?

Grimhildr, how was the kid ever to survive?

He risked another glance at Granger, and saw her clutching Weasley’s arm fiercely. The ginger git was so pale Draco could have counted his freckles from where he stood. Well, at least Potter would get his best friend back, and it’d only take him almost dying.

“Calm down, Drasha,” Svetlana admonished him.

“I am calm,” he said through gritted teeth.

She looked pointedly at his hands, clentched tightly against the rail once again. He let go, and clutched them open and close a few times to get the blood circulating again.

“He’ll do fine.”

And he did, amazingly. He did more than fine, he did magnificiently.

All of Draco’s fears disappeared when, after two agonizing minutes where nothing happened, though Harry had cast a spell no one heard, the Firebolt slammed into the kid’s hand and he jumped on it and pushed off the ground simultaneously, with a smoothness of movement a great many professional Quidditch players would have envied him.

Draco cheered when Potter flew circles around the dragon’s head and doved under her tail and away from her flames. He cried in alarm when the great spikes caught the boy on his shoulders, and shouted in triumph when Potter rose up with the golden egg tucked under his arm. And he stood and clapped his hands off when Potter landed in front of the jury, disheveled and with darkened cheeks from his flight.

“Once again, Drasha. Supposed to cheer for our Champion, remember?” Svetlana sighed beside him.

He flipped her the bird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last quote from sadfishkid's illustration of Durmstrang!Draco is coming up next chapter, and peeps, I can't wait for you to see it. There's so much flirting and so much awkwardness, I love my little disaster bi Harry.


	9. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry feels even more betrayed by the powers that be because of the Yule Ball than he ever did on discovering a Dark Wizard had put him on his hit list before he was even born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flirting! Teasing! Awkwardness all around! (mostly on Harry's part, to be fair)

They were sitting by the lake, and Draco had cast a warming charm on Harry that was much longer-lasting than his owns. It was also much more delicately balanced, in that Harry could somehow feel the sharp coldness of the air at the tip of his nose and on his cheeks, but he was comfortably toasty everywhere else. It felt like coming in from a snow day and lounging in front of the common room fireplace, and Draco said that was the only proper way to enjoy warming charms.

“I can’t believe they are forcing us to dance,” Harry complained. “I thought the Tournament only meant mortal danger, not socially embarassing situations.”

“One would think you’d be used to them, though,” Draco replied laconically.

Harry shot him a betrayed look.

“What?” Draco said. “I’m not the one tripping over my own feet everytime I talk with Diggory or his girlfriend.”

“You said you would stop talking about that,” Harry cried, annoyed. “And I did not trip.”

It was a complete lie. Harry had thought he might ask Cho for the Yule Ball, and when he had finally screwed up the courage, it had only been to see her walking hand in hand with his co-Champion. He had almost faceplanted in his hurry to flee the area, and a lot of people had witnessed it, including Draco and Ron. Ron also teased him a bit about it, but it didn’t have the same undercurrent of meanness that when Draco did it: the Durmstrang student almost seemed angry about it, while Ron simply empathized, since he had not found a partner either yet.

“Do you even know how to dance?” Draco asked, idly tracing rounds of smoke with his wand.

“Where would I have learned to dance?” Harry sent him a surprised look. “McGonagall is going to give us some lessons, but I don’t think she’ll have time to teach us all properly.”

“Your relatives could have taught you,” Draco said.

Harry tried and failed to imagine Vernon dancing a waltz or a tango.

“Do you know how to dance?”

“Of course I do, I’m pureblood,” the git scoffed, rolling his eyes. “We get taught young, so we don’t make fools of ourselves when we have to attend formal functions and start courting later on.”

“Courting?”

“Well, the tradition has fallen a bit out of fashion, but in pureblood families, people used to start courting around fifteen or sixteen. That way you had a lot of time to find a proper partner from your social circle, and if that didn’t work out, you still could move to foreign circles when you got older.”

“You purebloods are weird,” Harry said, flopping back.

Draco twisted his upper body to look at him where he laid on the grass. The sun was on his back, with the greyish light of early December colouring his hair even lighter than usual, and Harry couldn’t make out his features properly.

“I could teach you,” he offered.

Harry rose up on his elbows to try and decipher his expression, but it didn’t help.

“I- Would-,” he bit his lip. “Would that be okay?”

He heard Draco exhale slowly.

“No, obviously not,” the Durmstrang boy drawled. “Otherwise, why would I even offer?”

He followed Harry’s example and laid down as well, on his side, his head propped up on one hand so he could watch Harry. The scrutiny made Harry feel uneasy, like his skin was too tight against his face; he barely restrained himself from squirming.

“How come your relatives never even taught you one simple dance?”

“They’re muggle,” Harry said.

“So? Muggles dance as well, don’t they?”

“Not formal dances. Not mine.”

Harry didn’t feel like explaining that Petunia and Vernon were unlikely to dance at all, that Dudley probably despised the notion, and that even if they had, somehow, known how to, they would hardly have been enthusiastic about imparting their knowledge to him. The only times the Dursleys had taught him anything, it had been so he could do more chores around the house.

Somehow, he really didn’t want to tell Draco, with his posh ways and his sophisticated airs, about the Dursleys.

He could still feel Draco’s eyes on the side of his face, boring into him. Maybe Draco could see through it all, peer into his brain directly and see the truth about him. It was a scary thought.

“You could go with me,” Draco suddenly said. “To the ball, I mean.”

“What?” Harry asked, whipping his head to watch him, his eyes widening in surprise.

They were much closer to each other than Harry had realized: from such a short distance, Draco’s eyes looked a bit blue, rather than the usual steely grey, and Harry could make out the eyelashes, so fair and fine it almost looked like the Durmstrang boy had none, from afar.

“You haven’t asked anyone yet, right?” Draco asked, his voice dropping lower as his eyes darted away and back to Harry’s.

“You,” Harry gulped. “You, er, you want to go to the ball with me?” he whispered, his throat dry and clamped.

“Are you daft? Why do you think I’m asking?” Draco frowned at him.

“But. I’m not a girl,” he said.

“Thank you for pointing out that very obvious point, Potter,” the Durmstrang boy drawled. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Aren’t boys supposed to go with girls?” Harry asked, confused.

Surprise registered on Draco’s face.

“Oh, well. I mean, we could always get a hold of women’s robes and one of us could wear them, if you really feel that’s an indispensable part of the process,” he said, and Harry could feel his whole face and neck turning hot in response to the smirk overtaking Draco’s lips.

He turned his face away, bringing his hands up to hide it.

“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it,” he said.

He could hear Draco’s soft laugh besides him, and then felt his hands, smooth and long-fingered, clasping around his own wrists to gently draw them away from his face. Harry’s breath hitched, confronted with a grinning face and eyes full of mirth, right above his.

“So?” Draco asked.

“So what?” Harry barely managed to breathe out.

“Want to go with me, or not? Come on, Potter, I haven’t got all day,” the Durmstrang boy said in a brusque way, but he was gently tucking one of Harry’s wild curls away from his face.

“I, I,” Harry’s mouth was so dry, and he had to lick his lips. He needed, desperately, for Draco to step away, but it was obvious that it wouldn’t happen if he didn’t provide him with a response, and Harry’s brain was drawing a blank. Finally, he managed to articulate: “I. Yes.”

Draco beamed at him, and Harry had been a fool to think he would manage to regain his bearings after pushing out his answer. That smile was _unfair_.

“Great! We’ll start the dancing lessons tomorrow then. And I’ll need to see your dress robes. I can’t be seen with someone who doesn’t clean up nice, you know.”

Harry was still a bit disoriented when he stepped into the common room one hour later, and found Ginny trying to comfort a shaken Ron.

“What happened?” he asked, exchanging a glance with Hermione, who was sitting on another sofa.

“He asked Fleur Delacour to the Yule Ball,” Ginny said.

“I- I don’t know what came over me,” he wailed, pushing his hands into his hair wildly. “She was just there, and she was so pretty, and I couldn’t help myself!”

“Oh,” Harry said, awkward. “Then… What did she say?”

Both Ginny and Hermione glared at him, while Ron shot him a betrayed look.

“What do you think she said? She said no.”

“You’ll find someone else,” Hermione said with her reassuring voice.

“No I won’t,” he said gloomily, looking at his upturned hands on his lap. “I behaved like a twat, and everyone saw. No one’s going to want to go with me. And all the pretty girls have already been asked, anyways.”

They all winced at that. Hermione opened her mouth, probably to berate him for his superficiality, but couldn’t get a word in when he suddenly turned to her and looked her up and down and said: “Hermione, you’re a girl,” like it had only just occurred to her.

Harry saw his friend’s face close itself at that remark, and knew there was no way this conversation would end up in a nice manner, but Ron was already launched.

“Yes, Ron, how astute of you to notice that,” Hermione said in an artic tone.

She was clearly daring him to finish his thoughts, and Ginny surreptitiously disentangled herself from her brother to take a step back, coming closer to Harry.

“No, I mean, I knew, but it’s not what’s important now,” he said dismissively, like he was chosing each of his word very carefully to snip at Hermione’s every last nerve. “It means you could go with me to the ball.”

“I’ll have you know, Ronald Weasley,” Hermione said really, really sweetly. “That I already have a partner to the ball.”

“What?” he said, bewildered. “Who is he?”

“None of your business,” she retorted, raising from her sofa. “But he asked me the very day they made the announcement about the ball. You know, when all the _pretty girls_ were asked.”

They all watched her stomp back to the girls’ dorms, mouth hanging open. Then Ron turned to them and Ginny raised both hands without saying a word, and took off in the same direction before he could say anything.

“Why was she so angry?” Ron asked, nonplussed. “I only asked her to the ball.”

Harry really had no answer to this one, if his best friend really did not realize what he had said wrong, so he didn’t say anything and shrugged.

“Do you know who she’s going with?” Ron asked again, and when Harry answered negatively: “Damn. We’ll be the only two sods without a partner at this rate. Maybe we should just go with each other.”

“Oh,” Harry said, shifting on his feet. “Oh, er. I actually got a partner.”

“Did you?” Ron’s face cleared. “Great for you, mate! Who are you going with? Oh, did you finally ask Cho?”

Harry scratched his neck, embarassed.

“Er, no. She’s going with Cedric.”

“Oh, mate. I’m sorry for you,” Ron said in immediate compassion, clapping his shoulder. That was the good thing with Ron: sometimes he could be really oblivious, but when he wanted he could be very supportive. “Then who did you ask?”

“Someone asked me, actually,” he mumbled, running his hand through his hair.

“Really? You lucky bastard, that’s so unfair! So I’m the only one without a date, is that it?” Ron exclaimed. “So who is it?”

“Oh, er.”

“Come on, come off it. Who asked you? Which House?”

Harry played with the edge of his sleeves, eyes darting everywhere but towards Ron.

“Not from Hogwarts,” he mumbled.

“What? From Beauxbatons, then?” Then, when Harry kept on avoiding his eyes: “Not from Durmstrang, surely?”

Harry gulped and nodded, raising his eyes slowly to meet Ron’s. His best friend blinked at him a few times before an expression of horror came over his face and he launched himself back in his chair.

“No, Harry, no,” he moaned, throwing his arm across his eyes. “Really? That ponce Malfoy?” he added, taking a peek from under his wrist.

Ron had not made much of a secret of his disapproval of Harry’s friendship with Draco. He had become much more tolerant of the Slytherins and Durmstrang students under Hermione’s impulsion, but apparently he drew the line at the Malfoy family. Harry thought it might have to do with the fact that Mr Malfoy still made it its goal to complicate Mr Weasley’s professional life as much as possible, but Hermione reckoned it had more to do with his subconscious fear that Draco might steal Harry from him, especially since they had become friendly when Ron was behaving like a git and ignoring Harry. She said it made him feel inadequate that Draco, who had not known Harry at all then, had been much more supportive than him, who was supposedly his best friend.

“I’d understand if it was Krum, but Malfoy!” Ron whinged again. “He’s such a, a...”

Harry wondered if his best friend would still show the same preference for Krum if he told him he rather suspected the Durmstrang champion of being Hermione’s date to the ball. He had not spent that much time with either Krum or Draco’s other friend, Svetlana Rasputin, but each time it had happened, numerous hints had been dropped about Krum’s unusual interest in the library those days. Mostly from Draco, too, who seemed to greatly enjoy riling Krum up.

“A ponce?” Harry suggested, because that had been Ron’s favourite designation for Draco since the first Task.

“Yes!” Ron replied fiercely, as if Harry had provided him with the answer to the mystery of life.

“Well, I like him,” Harry shrugged.

“I know that,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like you’re very subtle when you get a crush.”

“What?” Harry sputtered. “I don’t have a crush on Draco!”

“Uh, yes you do,” Ron said, giving him a weird look. “You’re always behaving like a dolt in front of him, just like you do around Cho or Cedric. You’re always going off to meet him, mate, you even blew me off the other day because apparently that was the only time he was free. You’re going to the Yule Ball with him!”

“Yes, as friends!” Harry retorted, feeling like his face might burst.

Ron made a grimace of doubt.

“Mate, are you sure about that? Because I don’t think he meant to invite you as a friend.”

Harry fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap yourself in, folks. Next stop: the Yule Ball!


	10. The Yule Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco will probably end up the Ball terribly maimed, based on Potter's abysmal dance skills, but he can't bring himself to regret it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unapologetically fluffy.   
> And I just love Svetlana Rasputin. She's the most over the top bitch out there and she just doesn't give a shit, it's so beautiful.

To Draco’s great surprise and relief, Harry’s dress robes had a nice cut, and were a deep bottle green color that did wonderful things for his skin tone and eyes. If he had been the one to pick them, he might have gone for something slightly less European in style. Anita Lulla would revolutionize the fashion scene in India given some time, in Draco’s not at all humble opinion – he had great taste, thank you very much.

But there wasn’t really anything to fault with the current set, they would go very well with Draco’s own charcoal grey one, and Harry seemed very reluctant at the idea of ordering new ones, so Draco let it rest. He knew how to pick his battles, and teaching Harry to dance would already be an uphill one.

“Remind me to wear steel-reinforced boots for the ball,” he winced when Harry once again tried to include a fourth step into the basic box set of the Viennese Waltz and stomped on his two last toes.

“Why must I learn the woman’s steps?” Harry muttered, his head bowed to watch his feet, his mouth moving silently as he tried to count the beats.

“Why are you so focused on the roles, Potter? You’ve been whinging for the past half-hour, and if you put the same energy into remembering the steps, we’d already have moved on,” Draco sighed, and then, firming his hold on Harry’s waist and hand, proceeded to lead them through a perfect example of a simple box set and right turn.

When he stopped them, Harry promptly smashed into him, tried to step back, tripped over nothing and stomped on Draco’s feet all over again when rebalancing.

“See? This is why I’m leading: I actually know the steps, and I can force you to follow if need be,” he said, controlling his grimace as Harry peeked a panicked look at him from under his curls. The kid was lucky he was so cute. “And I’m trying to teach you the other part because I’m hoping that it will ensure the survival of my remaining toes. Optimistic as that may be.”

Harry mumbled something he couldn’t quite catch but was ready to wager went along the lines of cursing the whole damn Tournament, including Yule Ball and everyone who had ever been involved in its organization. Draco couldn’t fault him for that.

“It will be fun,” he said, returning them to the center of the room.

“Says you,” Harry muttered sullenly, eyes fixed on his feet once again as they went through another repetition. “I’m just going to fall on my ass. I’m sure the other Champions know how to dance.”

“Well, yes,” Draco said. “Diggory’s pureblood and his parents both have important positions in the Ministry, he’s probably attended his fair share of Ministry functions. Viktor’s mother is a diplomat, she obviously taught him how to behave in good society. Not that you would know it from his conversational skills. And Beauxbatons teaches social etiquette as part of its core curriculum ever since Madame Maxime became the headmistress.”

“Have you ever been told your bedside manner sucks?” Harry said, raising his head to glare at him.

“It might have been mentionned once or twice,” Draco said airily. “But you know what your advantage is?”

Harry shook his head, his eyes still fixed on Draco’s face, which meant he wasn’t focusing on the steps anymore. It had allowed Draco to lead him through two box sets, one right turn, another box set and even a left turn, so far.

“Well, you’ve got me, obviously,” he said with a grin. “And I’m the superior dancer in this whole school, teachers and foreign students included.”

“If anyone has ever complimented on your modesty,” Harry informed him. “I hope you know that they were lying through their teeth.”

Then he seemed to remember they were dancing, and knocked his knee into Draco’s.

“You know, this whole endeavour would go so much better if you stopped trying to maim me every time you move,” Draco sighed.

Since, apparently, both of Harry’s friends also had dates with non-Gryffindors, they all decided to meet at the bottom of the main staircase, in the Entrance Hall. Draco was already waiting with both Viktor and Svetlana, when Harry and Weasley joined them, bickering about the identity of the gingerhead’s partner. Apparently he had decided to go the same direction as Granger in retaliation, and refused to tell who he had invited. Draco had told Harry, at length, how ridiculous of a reaction it was, especially since one had to be pretty stupid not to realize that obviously Granger was going with Viktor, the fool was gone on her, but Harry had expressely forbidden him to express that opinion to his friend. Svetlana was going on her own, and only just enough time to have a laugh at Viktor and Draco before returning to the boat. She had little interest in the hustle and bustle of a school ball, and very much doubted, probably with reason, that they could compare with the ones held at the Rasputins’ palace, where they still partook in the traditions of Imperial Russia. Russian wizards did love their celebrations grandiose and expensive.

Still, for the occasion, she had worn a silk dress in golden yellow, embroidered in the same color on the sleeves, underneath deep blue velvet robes trimmed with white fur. The sleeves of the robes were split in the Muscovite style, and fell down to her knees. She had foregone any headpiece, though Draco knew they were _de rigueur_ in her country, and simply braided her long hair as a crown around her head. The overall effect was quite impressive, but, as she told them, quite sober compared to some of her most elaborate dresses back at home.

Draco suspected she wanted to show Hogwarts how to dress for proper balls.

“You look nice,” Harry said, as he joined them down the stairs, his eyes averted from Draco’s face because the kid apparently couldn’t handle giving compliments, or receiving them, or any flirting, really, while making eye contact.

“I know,” Draco said, because he did. His dress robes were made of fairyworms silk and had been hand-tailored by Kognok and sons, a goblin shop so exclusive his parents had booked his appointments before he was even born. He looked more than nice, he looked perfect. Even Svetlana could not find anything to fault with his appearance: even the lack of color in his outfit was compensated by the obvious quality of the costume.

Harry’s robes he had already seen, obviously, and nothing else in his appearance could hold any surprise. He might have tried to tame down his hair, but with the wild riot of his curls, it was always difficult to tell.

“So modest,” Weasley muttered, rolling his eyes.

“And what _are_ you wearing, Weasel?” Draco said in horror as he finally took a good look at him. “Grimhildr, this is even worse than I dared to expect. Don’t you have _eyes_?”

The elbow Harry sent into his side reminded him that he might have gone for a more diplomatic reaction – and damn, if the kid didn’t have some sharp angles on that body of his – but really, he had been too surprised to rein himself in. Weasley turned beetroot red at his remark, and between the hair, the freckles and the appalling maroon colour of his dress robes, that made for a deeply unflattering picture.

Svetlana saved the day – and probably any chance Draco might have entertained he had with Harry Potter as well – before the Weasel could step forward and clock Draco in the face as he so obviously wanted to.

“I vill not allow you to attend zat ball vearing zis,” she said, just as horrified as Draco had been. “Vy did you not transfigure zem into somezing more appropriate?”

With a few swirls of her wand, she had the fraying ends of the robes all nice and neat, and the colour set to a nice sapphire blue. It was a bit loud for Draco’s taste, but actually worked quite well with Weasley’s skin tone and red hair. Fortunately, the cut of the robes was very traditional in style, which helped mask the little imperfections owing to their obvious age and wear.

“Much better,” Svetlana said with a satisfied nod at her wandwork.

The Weasel blinked several times, considering his new clothes with a surprised air, and finally said:

“Blimey. Er, thank you, I guess? I mean, you were pretty insulting about it,” here he glared at Draco, which, hey, unfair, Svetlana had also been quite vocal about her disgust. “But this is much better than before.”

“You’re velcome,” Svetlana said, inclining her head. “I felt sorry for your date.”

“I wouldn’t ‘ave cared,” a soft voice said from behind them. “I’m just so glad I can come to the Ball.”

They all turned to goggle at Fleur Delacour and her younger sister, both wearing white feathery dresses. Fleur’s was a floor-length gown, in the French fashion, with a short cape around her shoulders in a metallic sheen. Her sister’s was empire-waisted, and stopped right below her knees, giving her a very angelic appearance. Their veela heritage had never been so apparent.

“Zank you for taking my sister to the Ball, Ronald,” Fleur said. “Take good care of ‘er, please. You weell be’ave, Gabrielle, weell you not?”

Satisfied with the girl’s nod, she glided to the Great Hall doors, where a dark-haired Hogwarts’ student presented her with his arms, looking just as stupidly bessotted as Weasley did in that moment.

“Really, Weasley?” Draco drawled as he turned back to him. “You couldn’t get the older one, so you went for the sister? Isn’t she a bit young for you?”

“This is not what happened!” the redheaded git protested.

“I was ze one who asked ‘im to take me,” Gabrielle Delacour interjected with authority. “I wanted to go, but Fleur wouldn’t take me because she wanted to go wiz a boy,” her voice turned very disdainful as that particular moment. “And I knew Ronald ‘ad no one since Fleur ‘ad rejected ‘im, so I begged ‘im to take me and ‘e said yes.”

“So you’re an even bigger pushover than I thought,” Draco said, rolling his eyes at the Gryffindor. “Can’t even say no to a ten-year old.”

He neatly sidestepped Harry’s pinching fingers.

“I’m eleven,” Gabrielle said, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Why don’t we go inside?” Harry exclaimed brightly, grabbing Draco’s arm and starting to drag him toward the Great Hall.

Draco reluctantly let himself be led away, followed by Ron and Svetlana, Gabrielle chattering about how the two top students of each year had been allowed by Madame Maxime to come to Hogwarts for the year, and she had aced the exam for her year, so she could see her sister win the Tournament now and wasn’t that great?

He dearly wanted to remind her that she was talking to the best friends of two of her sister’s rivals, who probably wished for her defeat, but Harry’s glare promised dire retributions if he dared to antagonize the girl again.

“Why must you be like that?” Harry grinded through his teeth as he stomped them to a table.

“Like what?” Draco said innocently.

“Like an arrogant jerk!” Harry exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “You know Ron doesn’t like you, can’t you try to be a bit more… Conciliant?”

“Why would I? He’s not making any effort for me,” Draco pointed out.

“Draco, you were about to start arguing with a first year you don’t even know for the sake of annoying him,” Harry sighed, dropping onto a chair. “I’m not asking you to be nice to Ron, just… maybe don’t antagonize him so much?” He raised hopeful eyes to him, which absolutely counted as cheating.

“Fine,” Draco huffed. “But for the record, I’d like to note that I’m not the one who started this whole aggressivity thing.”

And he had not been. From the day Harry had reconciliated with his best friend, after the git had realized that potential mortal danger was nothing to feel jealous over, Weasley had made his displeasure about their friendship loud and clear. He attacked Draco on various subjects, like his practice of the Dark Arts – it was part of the bloody curriculum at his school, what was he supposed to do, fail it so he could be deemed good an appropriate acquaintance by the mighty Ronald Weasley? – or his family name – like he could do anything about it. It had quieted down since Draco had asked Harry to the Ball, but the first weeks had been very tense.

“Good,” Harry said, smiling at him, which, unfair, much? “I think they’re calling us for the first dance,” he added, making a face.

“It will be alright,” Draco promised, taking his hand in his.

They took their place on the dancefloor, Harry already turning nervous and twitchy. Draco gave his hand a squeeze and, manoeuvering him into the proper position, spotted Weasley’s face in the crowd: the flush was gone now, and he was pale in anger. Following his line of sight, Draco saw Granger and Viktor smiling at each other, and, ah, that was not likely to endear Durmstrang students any more to Harry’s best friend.

The whole ball passed much too fast. He liked such occasions, in the first place, but in this instance he could even venture to say that this was the best time he had had in such a context so far. Even the few occasions where they had to stay in Weasley’s general scowling vicinity couldn’t spoil the evening, and even his dark mood diminished when Granger gushed of how sweet he had been to take the small Delacour to the ball and to dance with her. It did not make the Weasel agreeable by any kind of measure, but he did cut down on the scowls and the glares back to his usual amount. Since he was now sharing his disdain between Draco and Viktor, they only got each half the quantity that had been so far exclusively reserved to Draco, so this new arrangement satisfied Draco greatly.

The night ended more early than any of them would have truly liked, and Harry and Draco found themselves on the grounds overhearing a rather pointless and rather dangerous conversation about giant heritages – really, anyone could see both participants were part-giant, what could be gained by discussing it where anyone could hear? – and feeling embarrassed at Delacour trailing her partner towards the bushes for some more intimate time.

Well, Harry was embarrassed. Draco was considering if he could get away with it.

“Hum, so,” Harry started, and stopped. “I was wondering,” he tried again. “I mean, I have been wondering.”

“A complete sentence would be nice, Potter,” Draco said, but either he had not put enough conviction in it, or Harry was too focused on what he wanted to ask, because that did not get him the glare and sass he had expected.

“Ron said, back when you asked me to the ball,” Harry messed with his curls, sending them flying in all directions. One of them settled near his left eye corner, which had to tickle. “He said that maybe...”

“I’m not sure I’m interested in any of Weasley’s opinions on myself,” Draco said, resisting the urge to push back the curl.

He was not helping, he knew that, but he was also quite unclear on whether or not he really wanted to know where this was going. Not that Harry seemed likely to quit his efforts to say his piece. Damn that Gryffindor courage. Draco wasn’t sure he could handle it.

“Hesaidyoudidn’tinvitemeasafriend,” Harry finally said without breathing.

“Sorry? I didn’t quite catch that,” Draco said, raising an eyebrow.

He was pretty sure he had. It didn’t hurt to check.

“He said,” Harry took a deep breath now. “He said you didn’t mean your invitation today as a friend.”

Draco really should have seen that one coming. He had know the kid was clueless, after all, a walking disaster, even.

“Where did you even get the idea I meant it as a friend?” he asked, pushing that damned curl back and trailing his thumb over that lightning scar in the same movement.

They both startled as they heard a voice call out:

“Mr Davies, 10 points from Ravenclaw, and get back to your common room,” followed by the zap of a banishing spell. “Miss McKinnon, Miss Clearwater, 10 points each from Hufflepuff. You should find a better place next time.”

Oh, bloody hell! That Transfiguration teacher couldn’t have waited just one more minute?

“Mr Potter, what are you doing here? The ball is over, you’re supposed to be on your way back to Gryffindor,” the woman had just come their way, and watched them severely over the rectangles of her glasses.

“I was just saying goodbye to Draco, Professor McGonagall,” Harry muttered.

“Well, get on with it. If you’re not back in the Tower in ten minutes, you’ll get a detention,” she said, walking away. “And Mr Potter?” she added over her shoulder. “I will know.”

Harry gulped, and Draco had to resist the urge to do the same. That woman was scary. She could even have given Blacklund a run for his money.

“I have to go,” Harry said quickly. “But, er… See you tomorrow before you leave?” he asked hopefully.

Draco was scheduled to spend the remainder of his break at the Manor, and he had never felt less enthused at the idea of seeing his parents. But his mother was already disappointed he hadn’t been able to attend the Yule celebrations with them because of the ball, he couldn’t deny her the rest of the holidays as well.

He nodded.

Harry gave him a bright smile and, quick as a Snitch, he darted in and kissed Draco on the cheek before turning on his heels and disappearing into the castle.

Draco remained rooted at the spot, his hand stupidly held to his cheek, until the sudden hoot of an owl surprised him out of his trance and sent him on his way to the Durmstrang ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No matter what Draco has to say about it, I remain convinced that Ronald Weasley is just a sweet cinnamon roll who has a hard time dealing with his emotion. No folks, there will be zero Ron-bashing 'round those parts, I just love him so much. Actually there will be no bashing at all because I don't see the point (except, you know, between characters that don't like each other for good reasons).
> 
> My stock of finished chapters is also dwindling, so you might want to brace for longer-spaced updates.


	11. A hint and a kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems as if, everytime Harry is in a hurry, something conspires to make him late. That day, it's Diggory, and of course Draco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This could be subtitled: Draco has a strop.

The next morning, Harry hurried to the lake as fast as he could, cursing himself for oversleeping. The students who were spending the rest of their holidays would leave at noon, amongst which Draco, and he really wanted to hand him the – small, nothing really, just because he had seen it in Hogsmeade and thought of Draco – Christmas gift he had bought for the Durmstrang student. He had originally left it with the rest of the gifts he had bought for his friends, but the house-elves probably didn’t handle the distribution outside of the castle, and it had been left behind. In the midst of preparing for the Yule Ball, Harry had forgotten about it, and now that was the last occasion to give it to Draco, or it would have to wait until the end of the break. Harry didn’t want to wait ten days to give a Christmas gift – Draco might think he had just forgotten about it and bought it late.

He was almost to the ship, in front of which a few students mingled, the red uniforms of Durmstrang mixed with Hogwarts’ black robes, most trimmed with green – the Slytherins had taken to the foreign wizards quite well – and even the blue set of one Beauxbatons boy. But a superior power hated him, apparently, because he was waylaid before he could reach his goal, with a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Hey, Harry!” Cedric Diggory said, with his easy smile.

“Oh, hey, Cedric,” Harry said, throwing a glance toward the ship. “How are you?”

“Great,” the Hufflepuff said. “Did you enjoy yourself last night?”

Harry had loved last night, which had quite reconciled him with the concept of balls altogether. He had also been hoping for a nice and lengthy discussion with the reason he had spent such a good time, but it was already going on ten and Cedric was making him late. Well, later than he already was.

“Yes,” he said. “You?”

“I had a blast,” Cedric said with a large grin, and, okay, Harry really wanted to see Draco, but damn, that face was still making him light-headed. “You look like you haven’t slept much, though.”

Yeah, well, worrying endlessly about what he had done to Draco before going back to his dorm wasn’t very conductive to rest, Harry had found out. He had only managed to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, which had led to missing his alarm, and now he was late. He didn’t feel tired, though, propelled forward by anxiety and manic energy. What if Draco had already left? What if Draco didn’t feel like seeing him after that stupid, stupid kiss? Worse, what if he didn’t want to talk to him anymore?

There was no way to explain this to Cedric: Harry just shrugged.

“Look, I just wanted to thank you for the tip last time,” the Hufflepuff said, leaning forward a bit to whisper this. “Without you I would have been toast.”

“Oh,” Harry said, craning his neck to watch him. “Er, you’re welcome? The others knew as well, so it would have been unfair not to tell you too.”

“You’d have made a good Hufflepuff, Harry. Not everyone would have been worried about their rival getting the short end of the stick,” Cedric grinned. “Did you figure out the egg?”

“No, not yet,” Harry said, who had only opened it once and then not touched it again after getting his eardrums and almost those of everyone in Gryffindor Tower pierced by the high-pitched wails.

“You know the Prefect bathroom on the fifth floor? Fourth door to the left of that statue of Boris the Bewildered on the fifth floor. Password's _pine fresh_. It’s a great place, you should go and enjoy it. Take the egg with you, have a nice long bath with it. You’ll see, it will help,” he said.

Harry stared at him, and Cedric patted him on the shoulder.

“Trust me,” he said with a smile and a wink. Then, looking past Harry’s head, he said, his voice colder: “Hello, Malfoy. Don’t worry, I’m finished. He’s all yours.”

Harry turned. Draco stood behind them, glowering at Cedric with a hard set to his mouth. The Hufflepuff gave Harry a wry smile and took off in the direction of the castle.

“Hello?” he said, uncertain.

“What were you talking about?” Draco asked, his voice harsh. “You looked awfully chummy.”

“Just something about the second task,” Harry mumbled.

This was not going the way he had hoped.

“You do realize that he’s your rival in this tournament, right? I don’t think he needs your help to beat you. He’s got three years on you, he should be able to handle this by himself. That’s why the bloody goblet chose him, didn’t it?”

Harry stopped. It took Draco a few meters to realize the fact, and when he did, he threw a furious glare at Harry, who couldn’t help but take a step back.

“What?” Draco bit out. “Don’t like to be reminded of the truth, Potter?”

He sounded like Ron had during his row with Hermione when Harry had gotten back to the Tower last night, and wasn’t it such a blast to relive the scene as one of the main protagonists.

“What’s your deal?” Harry said. “Cedric was helping _me_ out, not the other way around. I don’t even care about winning this stupid competition, I only care about finishing it without waking up in the infirmary missing a hand or a leg. He’s very welcome to winning this stupid oversized glass, or maybe Viktor will win it and then he can give it to you, since you care so much about it.”

He was this close to stomping his foot like a kid having a tantrum – like Dudley used to do when Petunia refused to buy him the sweets he had set his eye on, really. Furious – at Draco for his words, at Cedric for causing this mess, at himself for reacting so immaturely – he stormed off in the direction of the Forbidden Forest, or Hagrid’s hut, he didn’t know. He just wanted to be away from Draco before his disappointment and rage came out like bile.

Of course, Draco, who seemed not to understand the concept of personal space so long as it wasn’t his, followed him.

“Where, in the name of Merlin, do you think you are going?” he said, once he had overtaken Harry.

Which was very much not an apology. Harry hadn’t expected one, exactly, because he knew by now that Draco didn’t really _do_ apologies, and that the one he had issued on their first meeting had been a one-time fluke, born for surprise at Harry’s outburst. He had, however, expected that specific attitude of Draco, who managed to blend arrogance and contrition somehow, and to ask for forgiveness without ever looking like he was doing.

That was not it.

“Away from you, since you seem insistent on being a prat,” Harry replied, eyes stubbornly fixed ahead of him as he kept walking. “Don’t you have a train to catch?”

“Oh, come off it, Potter!” Draco exclaimed. “It’s not for another two hours, and my luggage is all ready to go since I had so much time to straighten it this morning while you were off gallivating with Diggory.”

At this bit of nonsense, Harry had to stop, opening and closing his mouth in outrage.

“Are you going to say something, or do you intend to keep on mimicking a grindylow until you become one?” Draco said acidly.

“I was not gallivating with Cedric, you humongous tosser,” Harry spat. “We spoke for maybe two minutes, while I was on my way to see you, but I bloody well shouldn’t have bothered!”

“Excuse me for being a little vexed at being ignored in favor of flirting with Mr Bright-Smile Diggory,” Draco said, crossing his arms.

“Is that what it is about? We weren’t even flirting, Cedric has a bloody girlfriend!” Harry cried, throwing his hands up.

“Hasn’t stopped you from having a crush on him, has it? Or on his girlfriend, for that matter,” the Durmstrang boy snorted.

Harry could feel his face burn, from his throat to the root of his hair, in a mix of deep embarrassment and anger. Was he really that obvious about his crushes? First Ron, now Draco, was the whole school aware of who he fancied, for heaven’s sake?

“I thought it was quite obvious I wasn’t really focused on either of them these days,” he said feelingly. “Or do you think I just switch my mind from one day to another? At least your opinion of me is clear,” he added, and couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Draco looked stricken, and lurched forward to grab Harry’s arm, but Harry neatly sidestepped him.

“I don’t think that,” the Durmstrang boy said, taking his hand back. “I just-”

“Just what? Felt like making me feel like crap? What is it, retribution for last night?”

“No!” Draco protested. “No, I really enjoyed last night.” This time he managed to get a hold of Harry’s hand, and Harry looked at it, the pale white skin around his own brown one, and couldn’t find it in him to escape it. “I really did. I just- I just thought maybe it hadn’t been the case for you.”

Harry blinked at Draco’s grimacing face a few times and then, it dawned on him.

Oh. Ooooh. He had thought that Draco sounded like Ron just a few minutes ago, but it hadn’t crossed his mind that the words stemmed from the same underlying clause. Suddenly he felt like giggling: Draco, of all things, was jealous.

He didn’t giggle: he sensed that, at the moment, Draco was a high flight-risk.

“How did you even get to the conclusion that I hadn’t liked it? I kissed you!” he exclaimed, instead.

“Just on the cheek,” Draco mumbled. “It doesn’t really count. And anyway, you never know, with your Gryffindor types. You’re just too bloody touchy-feely, you probably do it to all your friends.”

Harry felt like pointing out that it was the furthest he had ever gone with a romantic partner, period, and he had been breathless and panicked about it all the way back to the Gryffindor Tower, and then some more hours afterwards for good measure. But that was a mortifying thing to confess to the older, more experienced boy you had done it to, and he thought he could do without the awkwardness.

“I don’t kiss my friends,” he settled for.

He barely hugged them, really, and only if they initiated it.

“Well,” Draco mumbled. “That’s good, I guess.”

They stayed a few more moments like this, lost in thought, while Draco’s thumb absent-mindedly traced Harry’s knuckles. Finally, Draco said:

“I must say, though. It wasn’t much of a kiss, was it?”

And he smirked and Harry ducked his head. He had used his whole reserve of daring for a few days on that action, Draco could rightly piss off if he expected anything more right now.

Draco wasn’t, as it turned out: he simply kept his hand around Harry’s, tugging him slightly to lead him back towards the lake. They stayed on the far end, away from the rest of the students, and talked until it was time for Draco to catch the Hogwarts Express, which he was really excited about.

“I’ve never been on it, you know, we get to Durmstrang by boat, obviously,” he said when Harry asked why. “And my parents both went to Hogwarts, both to Slytherin, obviously,” which Harry was more than ready to believe. He might like Draco, but it was Draco the foreign student from abroad, whom he hadn’t any past with, or any strong impression on other than what the older boy projected. Harry wasn’t sure they would have been on good terms had they met in Hogwarts, in the middle of the intense inter-House rivalry that opposed the Gryffindors and the Slytherins.

“Walk me to the gate?” Draco asked, tugging his hand, and Harry nodded, not trusting his voice at that particular moment.

His nervousness rose as his wish that Draco wouldn’t go intensified in an inversely proportionate manner to the distance to the gate, and as the window of time became shorter to give him his gift.

Harry was a Gryffindor through and through, though, and a few meters from where the horseless carriages awaited to take the students to the station, he tugged them to a stop.

“Erm… I got you something,” he said as Draco raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s not much but… it made me think of you.”

He thrust the small package at Draco’s chest without looking, and only heard the small ‘oomph’ of released air upon impact as he hit too hard, and then the rumble of Draco’s laughter.

“You shouldn’t have,” the Durmstrang boy said. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“Wasn’t expecting you to,” Harry mumbled, shuffling. “It’s really just because I saw it and, well, it made me think of you.”

“So I’ve gathered,” Draco quiped. “Since you’ve already said it twice. Can I open it now?”

Harry nodded, peeking up to watch Draco’s expression as he made short work of the wrappings. It was a small brooch, of a silver serpent with green eyes, who sometimes moved to settle its coils more comfortably.

“How adequate,” Draco snorted, and immediately pinned it to the lapel of his uniform. “I would probably have been in Slytherin if I had attended Hogwarts.”

“So you’ve said, loudly and multiple times,” Harry said drily. “I’m sure the Sorting Hat would try to sort you to it if you came within a hundred yards of it, even as a foreign student.”

“What can I say?” Draco shrugged, looking tall and handsome and without a care in the world. “I always make an impression, wherever I go.”

Harry rolled his eyes, because that was the reaction Draco was expecting from him, and tried not to betray the relief he felt that his gift had been appreciated.

“I really do not have anything for you, though,” the Durmstrang boy said, considering Harry and tapping his index against his cheek thoughtfully. “Ah! How about this?”

And he swooped down and pressed his lips against Harry’s cheekbone. They were soft and delicate, lingering for one, two seconds against Harry’s skin before retreating.

“See you in ten days, Potter,” Draco smirked, so close that Harry could smell the sharp accents of his shampoo.

Then he left, though the sensation of him, and the smell of him, remained with Harry for a long time afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Draco, you jelly drama queen.
> 
> Fair warning: I intended to keep this fic relatively light-hearted, then the characters decided that, yeaaaah, really, that wasn't their thing. So there's not as much fluff in the next chapter.


	12. A winter break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco loves his parents. He really does.  
> But sometimes they're making it difficult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco took the wheel starting from this chapter.

Draco was happy to see his parents. He was. Yet he couldn’t fully delude himself into thinking that there was not a small part of him, in the background of his mind, that thought about going back to Hogwarts a bit earlier, maybe just one or two days, not too much. He wouldn’t do it, obviously, it wouldn’t do to appear too eager, and his mother would be so disappointed. He hated it so when that happened.

One thing he had not anticipated, however, was how hard it would be to hide his nascent relationship with the Boy-Who-Lived from his parents. He rather thought that they would approve of the acquaintance – Harry Potter was a useful connection to have, of course – but a romantic involvement was less likely to be looked upon favorably. If Draco had not been soulmarked, that would have been one thing, but a mark changed everything. There could be no innocent flirting until his soulmarked had been identified, in Lucius and Narcissa’s mind. They had to be sure of the partner, of the bond, before Draco could be sent off courting amongst the pureblood families. There was no fighting a soulbond, only its nature: Draco was expected not to form a romantic relationship with his soulmarked if they were not of sufficiently good standing.

As a child, and even as recently as two years ago, Draco might have agreed with the sentiment. Now, he did not feel so sure. Could he really renounce such a connection for the sake of his parents’ ideals?

His parents had probably never entertained the idea that his heir could be connected to anything less than a pureblood, or, in an extremety, to a half-blood, and would accept his partner if they fit these categories – Draco shuddered to think of what would happen should his soulmarked be muggleborn or, Merlin forbade, a muggle. If his partner was a woman, he would probably be allowed to marry them, should they feel like it, but a man would never do: you couldn’t produce an heir with a man. You did not marry a man, just like you did not marry women from low social standing: at most, you set them up in a nice little house and visited them quietly after the birth of your first child, while your wife turned a blind eye to it.

Draco was sixteen. Had he not been attending Durmstrang, and soulmarked, Narcissa would have started setting up things during her tea parties to put word about that the Malfoy Heir had started looking. The absence of school breaks at Durmstrang would have pushed things back till he finished his seventh year, but there was nothing to be done about the soulmark, really. No well-bred pureblood would start the lengthy courtship process with an unsettled mark. It was not done.

So the matter of his mark had always been a matter of solicitude at the Manor, and when Draco announced it had manifested around the end of the summer, it became the main subject of conversation during meals:

“Four months, Draco,” Lucius said during dinner on Draco’s third day back. “And you only see fit to tell us now?”

“If it had settled, I would have informed you immediately, but it’s not the case yet. I didn’t want to discuss this through letters,” he said.

Lucius frowned mightily at him, but Narcissa laid a long-fingered hand on his forearm and said: “We understand, dear. We are just worried about you. This timing is most unfortunate.”

Draco could see how it would be, from their point of view: he knew they had hoped for him to meet his soulmarked at Durmstrang, filled as his school was with European witches with the best pedigrees, and here he was, with a partner that, in all probability, attended the very school they had sent him away from. When she had heard about his friendship with the Rasputin siblings, Narcissa had encouraged him to meet as many as possible of their family: a soulbond with someone of the sprawling Russian family would have been a master stroke, an alliance such as the Malfoy line could only have dreamed of. They spent too much time with muggles, to be sure, but that could be ignored in the light of their political and financial influence.

But Hogwarts it was, which pretty much ensured his partner to be a crony of Dumbledore’s or someone wholly unconnected: after all, Draco had been introduced as a kid to all the people in Hogwarts who could be considered good company, and his mark had never manifested.

“It’s not settled, yet,” he muttered.

“Oh, Draco, we do hope it will soon, believe me,” his mother said. “But we also wish you not to be in danger.”

Soulmarks could take years to settle into a proper form, and only once they were, would the bond between the partners be effective. It always necessicated large, impactful events involving profund changes in both partners, and sometimes that took the form of life-threatening situations. Rarely, overall, but often enough that it was a major concern for his mother.

“Nothing we can do about it,” Lucius said, brusquely. “But I expect you will take care to stay out of harm’s way.”

“Why would I even want to put myself in harm’s way?” Draco rolled his eyes. “Rest assured, I have not developed any Gryffindor-like suicidal tendencies in four months at Hogwarts.”

“And you will tell us if your mark changes any more than it already has?” his mother asked.

For now, his soulmark looked like a vague shadowy form, of something that could be an animal with a sort of halo around his head, if you squinted at it. But it had looked that way ever since the summer, and not moved an inch since. Draco did not expect it to, had never expected it too: he was unlikely to go through the kind of spectacular events needed for a settling at school.

“You will know of any change,” he promised easily.

“ _Any_ change?” his mother repeated, with a raised eyebrow.

He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. His mother knew him to well, knew his mannerisms too well. It had always been hard to hide anything from her.

“What do you mean?” he asked politely.

“Sophie Parkinson seemed to think you had struck up a friendship with the Potter boy,” she said, watching him over the rim of her wine glass as she took a sip. “You did not say anything about that.”

“I did,” Draco pointed out, because he had talked about Harry Potter in his letters to her.

“You told stories about his exploits, dear, you did not say you were spending time with him and taking him to the Yule Ball,” Narcissa tutted. “Obfuscation of the truth is still a form of lying.”

“And we do not appreciate your omissions,” Lucius said, his lips thin and severe.

“There are few things quite as disagreeable as learning things you ignored about your own son through other people’s mouths,” Narcissa agreed, with a slight incline of her head. “Rest assured, though, we do not disapprove.”

Lucius looked as if he wanted to dispute this claim, but Draco’s parents always decided which line they followed before any discussion, and always presented an united front, no matter how much they disagreed with each other privately. They never wanted to appear weak to internal dissenssions.

“You can have your little flirtation for this year,” he said, tapping his fingers on the wooden table slowly. “But we expect you to remember your duty when you return to Durmstrang. Harry Potter is not from our world, and he has proven multiple times to be under Dumbledore’s influence. We cannot trust him to act in the best interests of pureblood families, especially considering his… frequentations,” he finished with a slight sneer, which Draco took to mean his father was referring to Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley.

A muggleborn and a blood traitor were unlikely to gather much approval from his parents, indeed.

“Harry doesn’t care about politics,” Draco said with a shrug. “He’s just a kid, and he just wants to go to classes and avoid problems as much as the average student. I don’t think he’s ever given the slightest thought about the interests of pureblood families, positively or negatively.”

“Draco dear,” his mother said in a soft voice. “He is no friend of the Dark Lord, which makes him unlikely to feel much sympathy for us.”

“Well, the Dark Lord is gone, so it’s not like it matters, does it?” he said impatiently. “I don’t know what a wizard dead those past thirteen years has to do with my relationship with Harry Potter.”

Lucius pressed his hand, quick and half-hidden under the table, to his right forearm, where Draco knew the Dark Mark laid. He raised horrified eyes to his father, whose own were dark and severe.

“You said you had been forced,” he hissed, feeling as if he had been immerged in some burning hot liquid. “You said you had been Imperius-ed.”

“A necessary lie,” Lucius said calmly. “You were so young, and I could not leave your mother alone to raise you.”

“And you still believe in this nonsense? That the Dark Lord will somehow come and restore the purebloods to their former glory? He is dead, dead and gone!” Draco laughed, feeling a bit hysterical.

“But his ideals survive him, Draco. Are you saying you’ll turn your back on us, and refuse to continue the Malfoy line, for the sake of a boy you’ve know two months?” Lucius said, leaning forward. “Will you turn your back on your own family, on so slight a pretext? We are not telling you to throw him away, Draco, we are not even telling you to stop. We simply ask that you treat this as the thing it is: a young love between immature people, and unlikely to resist further than a few months. If it shall go on even after you are back in Durmstrang, and somehow still survive the distance, then we may revisit the matter, and discuss what arrangements could be achieved to reconcile your duty to the family and your feelings. Is that such a hard thing to agree to?”

Draco deflated under the combined weight of both his parents’ stares, Lucius’, so close to disappointment, and Narcissa’s mixed equal parts with sadness and hope.

“No,” he sighed. “No, this is not what I’m saying.”

“So you will keep your head about you, and not tell the Potter boy of our family’s private affairs?” Lucius said, putting his hands together in front of him. “Including our political inclinations, and any information that may result in negative consequences for us?”

“I had never intended to do so,” Draco sighed, leaning back into his chair.

“We can’t be too careful,” Narcissa said. “With Sirius Black’s escape last year, and the Dark Mark appearing this summer, everyone at the Ministry has been on their toes.”

“They would like nothing more than to round up all of us who managed to escape prison,” Lucius snapped, almost agitated now. “And with that mad Auror at Hogwarts, I’d rather you didn’t go off talking too much to ears that belong to Dumbledore.”

Ah. There laid the crux of the matter, of course. This was something Draco understood pretty well: Mad-Eye Moody had proven to be paranoid and not above considering the crimes of the father as the ones of the son, during classes. His attitude had left little doubt that, if he caught so much as a whiff of illegality from either Draco or his father, he would find immense pleasure in sending either of them to Azkaban. His exact words had been “better to take the whole tree out, when the roots are so rotten”, if Draco recalled correctly. And he had an excellent memory, especially for threat.

“I am not stupid, Father,” he said acidly. “Did you really think I would go around revealing family secrets to Gryffindors? I might not attend Hogwarts, but even I know better than to give away our weaknesses to brash hotheads that wouldn’t know discretion if it danced naked in front of them.”

He threw his towel on the table and rose: his father caught his wrist as he tried to leave the room.

“This is not about stupidity, Draco. This is about loyalty,” Lucius said, his voice low and his eyes focused.

“Then it’s even worse,” Draco hissed, shaking out of the grip.

His mother found him in his rooms later that evening. He was leaning against the mantel, watching the flames dance as he fed them the ripped remains of some letters.

“I am sorry,” Narcissa said as he raised his eyes to her in inquiry. “We didn’t mean to imply that you would ever be disloyal to this family, Draco.”

“No?” he laughed, bitter. “Could have fooled me.”

“Darling, you must understand. Our position has been very precarious these past few years, and we must take all precautions to ensure that nothing… untoward, happens to either of us,” she said delicately, taking a seat in the large armchair facing the fireplace.

“I am not responsible for Father’s political missteps,” Draco said, returning his gaze to the fire.

There was a silence, then:

“No,” Narcissa sighed. “You are not. But you know how important it is for us to stand together as a family. We cannot afford to be seen as divided. Some people don’t know any better than to believe everything they read in the Prophet.”

Draco neglected to answer this, but the words filled him with indignation. He had never been anything other than the dutiful son they had wanted him to be, never stepped out of line, and never voiced his opinion about their outdated views on blood purity, though at least Narcissa knew he no longer shared them as fully as she wished. _He_ had never been accused of anything and almost sentenced to Azkaban. And yet here they were, discussing how _Draco_ ’s actions could make the family look bad if Rita bloody Skeeter caught wind of this.

A fter a while, Narcissa’s robes rustled as she rose and made to leave the room. When he heard the sound of his door opening, Draco couldn’t help but ask:

“Mother? What happened to Dobby?”

“Who?” Narcissa said, genuinely perplexed. “Oh, the house-elf? I think your father freed him. It’s been what, one year?”

“Closer to one year and a half, I would say,” Draco muttered. “Goodnight, Mother.”

O nce the door closed, he sat on his bed and let himself fall backwards, contemplating the bed canopy, embroidered and spelled to show the nighttime constellations, with Draco made more prominent.

He wondered if his parents thought him so blind that he couldn’t connect the rumours at Hogwarts, about an heir of Slytherin and petrified muggleborns and an house-elf apparently freed through Harry’s intercession, and the absence of one such house-elf, who had been with the family before Draco was even born, from the Manor.  That he couldn’t see that their “precarious position”, as his mother had put it, was his father’s own doing, because he couldn’t even hide his dealings properly. It was the first rule you got taught at the Political Club, back at Durmstrang: do only things that are beneficial to you, and if those things make you look good, do them as publicly as possible. If they are illegal, you should be the only one to know about them. That rule had seemed so obvious to Draco, but apparently his father had missed that particular lesson. To think that Slytherins were supposed to be cunning.

Even that could have been forgiven, however. Draco did not approve of hurting muggleborns, or even muggles, really, and did not subscribe to the ideology that it would be beneficial for him or any other pureblood. Sometimes he wished, incongruously, that his peers would have some more _pride_ : if purebloods were supposed to be so much more superior to the others, why would they need to expand so much energy proving it to the world? But, as both Lucius and Narcissa had underlined it, loyalty to his family came first, even when they were behaving foolishly. They were his parents, and he loved them, and they him.

So it rankled that there would be lies between them, and lies there obviously were. Either Narcissa hadn’t know the truth about Dobby, and Lucius had lied to her, or she had, and that was even worse because then that meant she had lied to _Draco_.

Betrayal twisted your entrails something fierce, Draco found out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I had forgotten about the soulmarks?  
> I haven't. I'm just unsure on how much I want to stress that plot point, given that I want to also rewrite the following years.  
> We'll see.


	13. The Potions lab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry doesn't know what happened during the winter holidays. All he understands is that Draco wants nothing to do with him anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what uncooperative characters look like. I had planned this fic as light-hearted and fun, mostly, then Draco decided he had to be a drama queen.

Harry didn’t know what he had been expecting about Draco’s return, but it hadn’t been Draco stepping off the Hogwarts Express, taking a look at his face and proceeding to hug him while mumbling some curses under his breath. It had been a good surprise, though, right until Draco had backed off, and left without another word, surrounded by a cloud of dark mood. Harry had been left standing on the platform alone, feeling all kinds of lost, and even Hermione and Ron getting down from the train didn’t help as much as it usually did.

After that, that awful article by Rita Skeeter about Hagrid had come out, and Harry had had other things to worry about: it took him one week to realize that he had not seen hair nor hide from Draco Malfoy since that hug on the platform.

When he voiced his concerns to Ron and Hermione, who were, thankfully, back on speaking terms once again – though Ron still muttered about betrayal and crushes on Durmstrang students at annoyingly regular intervals – he got pretty much the reactions he had expected. Hermione wanted to find a solution, and Ron insulted the clothes off of Draco’s back and offered to hex him when they next come across him.

“I’m sure he has a reason, Harry,” Hermione said, patting his back.

“Oh, he has a reason alright,” Ron muttered darkly, glaring at flames dancing merrily in the common room’s fireplace. “And we all know what it is.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, surprised, because he certainly had not the foggiest idea what Draco’s reason for suddenly freezing him out could have been.

“He went back to his parents for the hols, you said?” Ron said, as if it were a sufficient explanation. When both Hermione and Harry kept looking at him uncomprehendingly, he sighed: “Don’t you remember what I told you about the Malfoys? His dad was a Death Eater, for Merlin’s sake. He probably got chewed out for spending so much time with you and inviting you to the Yule Ball. Now he’s realized that of course you’re You-Know-Who’s enemy, which doesn’t make you a friend of his family, and he’s keeping his distance.”

“Then why did he hug Harry?” Hermione pointed out. “That doesn’t make any sense, if he was planning not to have anything to do with him anymore.”

“Why would I know?” Ron exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Those bloody purebloods never make any sense, now, do they? You’re well rid of him, Harry, believe me. They have all those ridiculous courting traditions, like you wouldn’t believe, you’ll be so much better off with anyone else. Now we only need to get Krum to drop Hermione off, and we can go back to how things were before you got bewitched by those Durmstrang gits.”

Hermione cuffed him and he yelped.

“Do you have the smallest tactful bone in your body?” she said, glaring at him. “That was so far away from a motivational speech, I can’t believe you lost the plot so bad. And Viktor will not drop me, because we’re not in a relationship. We’re just friends.”

Ron gave her an unimpressed glance, but she tossed her hair back and ignored him.

“I could ask him, you know,” she offered, turning to Harry.

“Ask who?” he said morosely, putting his chin on his knees.

“Viktor. About why Draco is acting like this. He might know.”

He shrugged his doubt at her. Viktor and Draco were friends, he had no doubt about it, but they didn’t look like the kind of friends that confided their deepest secrets in each other. If anyone was likely to know about the reasons behind Draco’s attitude, he would bet on Svetlana Rasputin: not because Draco was more likely to speak to her, but because she might be able to guess them out. Viktor simply didn’t have this kind of observational skills.

He couldn’t exactly see himself going up to the Russian witch and ask, though. Contrary to Krum, she had made no overtures of friendship towards either Harry or Hermione, and tended to make herself scarce when Harry arrived while she was hanging out with Draco.

So he resigned himself: either Draco would come around, and tell him what happened, or Harry would just let it go. They hadn’t been in a relationship, after all, and it was obvious Draco regretted what little things they had done together. Whatever. It wasn’t like he cared, anyway.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione sighed, putting her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

In the end, it was Rasputin herself who came to Harry, around the end of January. She cornered him as he stepped out of the library, where he had spent two hours looking for a way to bloody breathe underwater for an hour. He hadn’t found one, and the sound of Krum’s fans giggling had grated on his nerves too much to continue the endeavour.

“Harry Potter,” she said, her accent making his name sound like it had twice as many ‘r’s as it usually did. “Vy are you and Draco not speaking anymore? He’s being a pain to be around.”

Harry took a look around him but no, she had cornered him well and good.

“I don’t know,” he said, annoyed.

He had almost managed to push the Durmstrang boy out of his mind. That was one thing he could thank the Tournament, he reckoned: that amount of stress did not leave him much room to dwell on his failed - what? Relationship? Romance? - with Draco Malfoy.

“Why don’t you ask him? He’s the one avoiding me.”

“I did,” Rasputin said with hauteur. “He said it vas none of my business.”

“Probably means it isn’t, don’t you think?” Harry said venomously. “And you’re still better informed than I am, because he hasn’t seen fit to talk to me since the day he left for the holidays.”

“Not at all? Since ze holidays?” Rasputin repeated, pushing her hair behind her shoulder thoughtfully. “I zought… Zen vere is he disappearing every evening?”

“Have you been listening to me?” Harry was almost trembling in anger. “I said I have no idea.”

“Come viz me,” Rasputin ordered, linking her arm with him.

Despite her being three years older, and Harry’s rather moderate height, she wasn’t much taller than him. She did have a surprising amount of strength, though, and took Harry by surprise. He got himself dragged almost to the end of the corridor before he reacted and dug his heels in.

“Why would I go anywhere with you?” he bit out, trying to free himself from her grip.

Rasputin watched him with a considering look and took a step back, releasing him.

“Ve’re going to figure out vy Drasha is acting like such a lunatic,” she said. “He should be in the potions lab at zat time, since he vasn’t in the library.”

Of course Malfoy was in the potions lab, he spent all his free time there those days, only leaving to attend his classes and meals. Sometimes he even skipped those, too. Not that Harry had checked. Multiple times. Using the Marauder’s map. He didn’t care, after all.

“You can figure it out by yourself,” Harry said. “It’s no concern of mine.”

“Sorry, Potter, but zat has to be the least convincing lie I’ve heard since my brozer tried to convince my mozer zat Durmstrang had instaured remote classes,” Rasputin said. “And you seem to be under ze mistaken impression zat I’m leaving you choice. You can come viz me of your own volition, or I can _levicorpus_ you zere bodybound, but you’re coming eizer way.”

Harry threw her an horrified glare, which she just shrugged off.

“You have no idea how awful Drasha can be ven he’s having a tantrum,” she said. “If he’s not going to do anyzing to rectify the situation, I vill. You might not be the solution, but at least I vill have tried.”

“What about my opinion in this?”

“Don’t you vant to know vy he’s broken up viz you vizout telling you?” Rasputin pointed out. “At least you vill have closure, right?”

Harry opened his mouth to tell her – what, he didn’t know. That they had not broken up, because they had not been together? They had been something alright, even if they hadn’t discussed it. To go to hell? That would have been a viable option, except he found out she was right. He wanted to know. He rather desperately wanted to know, truth be told, and the confusion and sadness had been eating at him so much that even Ron had told him he should talk to Draco, much as he’d rather hex his face off.

He let himself be guided to the potions lab.

When he saw the door, he fought down the urge to bolt away. He was a Gryffindor, after all, and Gryffindors were brave and didn’t run away from difficult conversations.

Rasputin had less qualms: she yanked the door open, pushed Harry in, and slammed the door shut on his back.

Draco was hunching over a cutting board and raised his eyes to watch Harry stumble in. He grimaced.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Harry should have expected it, really, but it still felt like a slap across the face.

“I, er,” he stammered.

“Let me guess,” Draco sighed, straightening and pushing the board away. “Rasputin?”

Harry nodded.

“I told her to mind her own bloody business,” the Durmstrang boy mumbled.

He was out of his red robes, wearing only black pants and a white flowing shirt, and Harry had never thought anyone could look more less like a muggle outside of robes.

“You should leave,” Draco said, gesturing at the door. “I’m busy.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Harry asked, his anger sparkling back. “You haven’t said a word to me in three weeks and the only thing you have to say is that I should leave?”

Draco sighed and leaned back against one of the benchtops, pinching the bridge of his nose as if feeling exhausted.

“I’m sorry, Harry, but yes,” he said, meeting his eyes. For a flash, he looked as if he really felt sorry, and sad, before his face smoothed over in a blank mask. “I haven’t told you anything because there’s no use. You wouldn’t understand.”

Oh yes, the rage was back alright.

“I wouldn’t understand?” he repeated in a low voice. “Don’t you think I should be the judge of that? Of course I don’t have any chance of understanding anything if I don’t have any explanation!”

Draco shook his head, unfazed.

“Even if you did,” he stopped as a few bottles started rattling on a nearby shelf. “Even if you did, it wouldn’t change anything, Harry. I can’t be seen with you anymore.”

“But why?” Harry cried. “I would like to know why?”

“As I said, you wouldn’t understand,” Draco shook his head, eyeing the shelves warily now.

“Stop saying that and just tell me,” Harry said, annoyed, with a cutting gesture of his hand.

Something, in the background, broke with a glassy sound.

“It’s my parents. I have to think about them,” Draco said and, when something else broke behind him, added in a frustrated tone. “Merlin’s pants, Potter, control your magic.”

“You can’t spend time with me anymore because of your parents?” Harry repeated incredulously. “What are you, six?”

“See? I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Draco sighed, trailing his hand through his – neat, always so neat, but not slicked back today – hair. “You don’t know what it is, growing up with parents like this. I can’t do this to them, it’s too dangerous.”

He must have realized what he had said when Harry didn’t reply, and raised catastrophed eyes to him, which Harry met with a flat stare. A ball of something really calm but really potent churned in Harry’s stomach.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Draco rushed out, raising his hands.

“I don’t care,” Harry said in a hard voice he barely recognized as his own. “I get why you thought I wouldn’t understand. What would I know about having parents, right?”

“I- Harry,” Draco said, desperately, as he reached out. Harry batted his hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, low.

Draco, looking like he couldn’t help himself, jerked his hand forward as if to try again.

The ball in Harry’s stomach, tight and clenched, exploded, half a second before every vial and flask in the lab followed suit.

“Oh for Merlin’s sake,” he had time to hear before Draco tackled him to the floor, yelling “Protego maxima!” over his shoulder.

Harry had fled the lab as soon as he had been able to push Draco off him after that, ignoring the damage he had caused. Draco could deal with it, for all he cared. The corridor had been empty: evidently Rasputin had assumed they would be mature enough to actually talk it out without needing her supervision. She had been wrong, about pretty much everything.

He had gone back to the Tower, ignored Ron and Hermione’s concerned questions, and fallen face first into his bed. When he had heard Ron coming up to check on him, he had closed his curtains and spelled them with a strong _silencio_ , and burrowed under the covers, hoping to sleep until he forgot ever having met Draco Malfoy, sleep for so long it might as well have been forever.

And he had buried, deep, deep inside himself, that stupid little hope that maybe Draco Malfoy, met right after his soulmark had started changing, was actually the one person supposed to bring the biggest positive change in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last pre-written chapter I had in stock.  
> Now you'll have to wait until I produce new ones, and I've unfortunately fallen off the NaNo train quite hard. We're on lockdown here, have been for the past few weeks. I'm also unemployed at the moment, so I have very little occasions to step out my house. It's getting tiring and my motivation is very low. I'll be trying my best but the next chapter might take a bit longer to come out.


End file.
